Question

I have a function that executes a query to get some data based on a certain date range which is selected using .datepicker(). I am trying to set the datepicker’s that are in the response data back to the date range which was selected before the query was executed.

queryDate = '2009-11-01';
$('#datePicker').datepicker('setDate', queryDate);

has the interesting result of setting the datepicker to today’s date! I wouldn’t be so confused if it just spit out an error. Why does it set it to today’s date?

How can I take the date which is formated like, ‘yyyy-mm-dd’ and set the datepicker to it?

I am thinking it might be best to just set the text-box which the datepicker is linked to to ‘queryDate’.

Answer 1

If you would like to support really old browsers you should parse the date string, since using the ISO8601 date format with the Date constructor is not supported pre IE9:

var queryDate = '2009-11-01',
    dateParts = queryDate.match(/(\d+)/g)
    realDate = new Date(dateParts[0], dateParts[1] - 1, dateParts[2]);  
                                    // months are 0-based!
// For >= IE9
var realDate = new Date('2009-11-01');  

$('#datePicker').datepicker({ dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd' }); // format to show
$('#datePicker').datepicker('setDate', realDate);

Check the above example here.