Question

I am using Javascript Date.parse() to check if a start time is after an end time.

The time in question is like this:

Date.parse("12:00pm") > Date.parse("9:30pm")

In Chrome this is coming up as false (as it should)

In IE it is incorrectly coming up as true.

The values Chrome see’s are:

Thu Jul 22 2010 12:00:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Thu Jul 22 2010 21:30:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

The values IE sees are:

Thu Jul 22 12:00:00 EDT 2010
Thu Jul 22 09:30:00 EDT 2010

How can I make IE work correctly?

update

OK this is only happening in IE7. Also I see now IE7 is not getting the am/pm which is stored in a SELECT box and retrieved via:

var startMerid = document.getElementById("start_time_ampm").options[document.getElementById("start_time_ampm").selectedIndex].value;

My select was like this:

<option>am</option>

but I changed to:

<option value="am">am</option>

and it now works.

Answer 1

The docs for Date.parse() in IE state the following:

If the 24-hour clock is used, it is an error to specify “PM” for times later than 12 noon. For example, “23:15 PM” is an error.

For a cross-browser solution, you should avoid parse() and parse the time string manually. Alternatively, you could use a cross-browser library for parsing dates/times – DateJS is a popular one.