Question

I have a form text field that pulls a date from a database (in the format yyyy-mm-dd).

<input class="" type="text" name="closingDate" id="closingDate" value="<?php echo $closingdate;?>" />@ Midday

I then have a jQuery datepicker that will grab its ‘defaultDate’ value as the value attribute of the input shown above.

$(document).ready(function(){
 $("#datepicker").datepicker({defaultDate: 'input#closingDate.attr('value')' , altField: 'input#closingDate' , altFormat: 'yy-mm-dd'});
});

(plz note: yy-mm-dd is correct to format as yyyy-mm-dd, also $closingdate correctly echo’s out as yyyy-mm-dd as i have checked it elsewhere in the page).

However the datepicker will not grab the date from the input field, it simply defaults to its ‘today’ value.

Answer 1

Sorry for being so late, but for completeness here is what worked for me.

Basicly you need to use the same dateFormat as the datepicker or pass a Date Object.

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#datepicker").datepicker({
        defaultDate: new Date($('input#closingDate').attr('value')),
        altField: 'input#closingDate',
        altFormat: 'yy-mm-dd'
    });
});

The problem with this is the input value is changed to ” so its no good for an edit form.

I personally use the setDate method with a Date object, this way I can use ‘2001-01-01’ in php but display a “nicer” looking date in the input.

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#datepicker").datepicker({
        altField: 'input#closingDate',
        altFormat: 'yy-mm-dd',
        dateFormat:'DD, d MM, yy'
    });
    $("#datepicker").datepicker("setDate", new Date($("input#closingDate").attr("value"));
});