JavaScript date object issue on Explorer

Question

I'm having a weird issue with Internet Explorer which is not converting a valid string date to JavaScript Date method.

The string is as the following:

2011-12-26T13:55:49.377Z

It's working fine on Chrome and Firefox but not on Explorer.

This is the code:

var now = new Date;
var call_start = new Date(call.start);
var difference = now .getTime() - call_start.getTime();

call.start is valid but call_start is NaN so the Difference is NaN.

What's the problem here?

I really need the miliseconds here...

maybe a duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3310913/javascript-date-parse-help — rene, Dec 26 '11 at 14:25
The question is whether your date-string is valid according to the ECMAScript standard... Just because it works in Chrome/Firefox doesn't mean it's valid... — Šime Vidas, Dec 26 '11 at 15:05

malko · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-26T14:44:55.467

1

we encounter same problem lately,

the easyer way is to explode your string or use regexp and set manually each part of the date object manually using methods

function getDateFromString(dString){
  var d = new Date(), m=dString.match(/(\d\d\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d)T(\d\d):(\d\d):(\d\d).(\d\d\d)Z/);
  d.setFullYear(m[1]);             // Sets the day of the month
  d.setMonth(parseInt(m[2],10)-1); // Sets the month (from 0-11)
  d.setDate(m[3]);                 // Sets the day of the month (from 1-31)
  d.setHours(m[4]);                // Sets the hour (from 0-23)
  d.setMinutes(m[5]);              // Set the minutes (from 0-59)
  d.setSeconds(m[6]);              // Sets the seconds (from 0-59)
  d.setMilliseconds(m[7]);         // Sets the milliseconds (from 0-999)
  return d;
}

thanks crapy Jscript implementation from microsoft

edited Dec 26 '11 at 14:44

answered Dec 26 '11 at 14:22

malko

2,292
18
26

Seems valid but dirty! Is there any other way to do that? – Antonio Laguna Dec 26 '11 at 14:24
yes this is not really nice but new Date and date parse won't work as intended with internet explorer, there's other's way to do but not really nicer than this one, you can if you want use some date library like dateJs but will you prefer a full library over a single function...? Depends your whole needs – malko Dec 26 '11 at 14:34

Andrew D. · Answer 2 · 2011-12-27T06:04:33.713

function dateFromGMTString(str) {
  var x=str.match(/(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2})\.(\d{1,3})Z/);
  return new Date(x[1],(+x[2])-1,x[3],x[4],x[5],x[6],x[7]);
}

UPDATE:

You can try to use Date.parse() method instead of Date contructor for converting GMT (JSON) like dates into javascript Date object. In this case you can try to "patch" Date.parse() for IE using next code example. Simply add this code anywhere in begining of your page javascript code:

if(Date.parse("2000-01-01T00:00:00.000Z")+new Date().getTimezoneOffset()*60000!==(+new Date(2000,0,1,0,0,0,0))) {
  (function() { // closure
    var rg=/(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2})\.(\d{1,3})Z/,
        parseOriginal=Date.parse;
    Date.parse=function(str) {
      var x=str.match(rg);
      return x?(+new Date(x[1],(+x[2])-1,x[3],x[4],x[5],x[6],x[7]))-new Date().getTimezoneOffset()*60000:parseOriginal.call(Date,str);
    }
  })();
}

After above code is executed you can use Date.parse() in all browsers (including IE) to convert string dates into javascript date objects using next code:

new Date(Date.parse("2011-12-26T13:55:49.377Z"));

JavaScript date object issue on Explorer

2 Answers2