var date = new Date();

alert( date.getFullYear() + ("0" + (date.getMonth() + 1)).slice(-2) + ("0" + date.getDate()).slice(-2) + ("0" + date.getHours() ).slice(-2) + ("0" + date.getMinutes()).slice(-2) + ("0" + date.getSeconds()).slice(-2) );

edit

function pad2(n) { return n < 10 ? '0' + n : n }

var date = new Date();
    
alert( date.getFullYear().toString() + pad2(date.getMonth() + 1) + pad2( date.getDate()) + pad2( date.getHours() ) + pad2( date.getMinutes() ) + pad2( date.getSeconds() ) );

[Addendum 12/2022]: Here's a library to format dates using Intl.DateTimeFormat.

[Addendum 01/2024]: And here is a (ES-)Date manipulation library

Try something like this

var d = new Date,
    dformat = [d.getMonth()+1,
               d.getDate(),
               d.getFullYear()].join('/')+' '+
              [d.getHours(),
               d.getMinutes(),
               d.getSeconds()].join(':');

If you want leading zero's for values < 10, use this number extension

Number.prototype.padLeft = function(base,chr){
    var  len = (String(base || 10).length - String(this).length)+1;
    return len > 0? new Array(len).join(chr || '0')+this : this;
}
// usage
//=> 3..padLeft() => '03'
//=> 3..padLeft(100,'-') => '--3' 

Applied to the previous code:

var d = new Date,
    dformat = [(d.getMonth()+1).padLeft(),
               d.getDate().padLeft(),
               d.getFullYear()].join('/') +' ' +
              [d.getHours().padLeft(),
               d.getMinutes().padLeft(),
               d.getSeconds().padLeft()].join(':');
//=> dformat => '05/17/2012 10:52:21'

See this code in [jsfiddle][1]

[edit 2019] Using ES20xx, you can use a template literal and the new padStart string extension.

const dt = new Date();
const padL = (nr, len = 2, chr = `0`) => `${nr}`.padStart(2, chr);

console.log(`${
    padL(dt.getMonth()+1)}/${
    padL(dt.getDate())}/${
    dt.getFullYear()} ${
    padL(dt.getHours())}:${
    padL(dt.getMinutes())}:${
    padL(dt.getSeconds())}`
);

Just leverage the built-in toISOString method that brings your date to the ISO 8601 format:

let yourDate = new Date()
yourDate.toISOString().split('T')[0]

Where yourDate is your date object.

Edit: @exbuddha wrote this to handle time zone in the comments:

const offset = yourDate.getTimezoneOffset()
yourDate = new Date(yourDate.getTime() - (offset*60*1000))
return yourDate.toISOString().split('T')[0]

We should use in-built toISOString function to covert it to ISO date format and remove not required data using string manipulation.

let datenow = new Date();

console.log(datenow); // "2021-07-28T18:11:11.282Z"
console.log(generateDatabaseDateTime(datenow)); // "2021-07-28 14:11:33"

function generateDatabaseDateTime(date) {
  return date.toISOString().replace("T"," ").substring(0, 19);
}

Ideally solution should be to use momentjs or dayjs library.