Question

I am having to try to determine whether a date from a hidden field, formatted mm/dd/yyyy, is less than today. if it is, I want to let the person know that a subscription has expired. I have had this working on some occasions but it is not reliably doing it??

//this is the expiration date that is in a hidden field
var expireDate = $("#expire").val();

//here I am trying to setup a new date for today and change the output to match the date
//format for the hidden field, i.e. mm/dd/yyyy
var a = new Date();
var b = a.toISOString().split("T")[0].split("-");
var ca = b[1] + "/" + b[2] + "/" + b[0];


//now I want to compare the 2 and if the expiration date is less than today, display a warning message                      
if (expireDate < ca) {
   $("<div class=\"message-warning\">This subscription is expired</div>")
    .insertAfter("#enddate");
};

Answer 1

You’re comparing the numerical value of strings, which happen to be the string representation of dates in mm/dd/yyyy format. I’m guessing that your “inconsistent” results are that it works if the old date is an earlier month than today.

Instead of converting a to a string, convert expireDate to a Date object. Then compare.

var expireDateStr = $("#expire").val();
var expireDateArr = expireDateStr.split("/");
var expireDate = new Date(expireDateArr[2], expireDateArr[0], expireDateArr[1]);
var todayDate = new Date();

if (todayDate > expireDate) {
   $("<div class=\"message-warning\">This subscription is expired</div>")
    .insertAfter("#enddate");
};