Question

First, does JavaScript have no basic Date comparision the way Python might?

In my Node.js script, I have the following lines:

console.log(Date(2012,11,10) < Date(2012, 11, 9))
console.log(Date(2012,11,10) > Date(2012, 11, 9))

However, both of these lines return false.

It appears there are tons of questions about “Date Comparison in JavaScript”.

However, for virtually all of them someone responds with their home-made solution for comparing dates, some of them quite long and/or “hacky”.

Is there really no inherent or idiomatic way to simply compare dates in JavaScript.
Do any Node libraries support it?

Answer 1

You need to use the new keyword

console.log(new Date(2012,11,10) < new Date(2012, 11, 9))
console.log(new Date(2012,11,10) > new Date(2012, 11, 9))

As Elias Van Ootegem pointed out it’s a standard to return a string if the new keyword is omitted:

When Date is called as a function rather than as a constructor, it returns a String representing the current time (UTC).

NOTE
The function call Date(…) is not equivalent to the object creation expression new Date(…) with the same arguments.

Source: 15.9.2 The Date Constructor Called as a Function