Question

I have a webservice that returns for example a DateTime object: DepartureDate.
I use ajax to fetch this and in my view I convert the JSON date string to a javascript date object with this function:

function convertToDate(jsonDate) {
    return eval("new " + jsonDate.substring(1, jsonDate.length - 1));
}

The problem is that new Date() takes the local time on the clients computer in consideration, so clients in different countries get different dates. I want to get the exact date that was returned from the webservice.
Is there any easy way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

The problem is that new Date() takes the local time on the clients computer in consideration

Nope. Creating a new Date using the timestamp constructor takes a UTC time stamp.

For example on my machine in UTC+1:

new Date(0)   // Thu Jan 01 1970 01:00:00 GMT+0100 (CET)

OK, the default toString displays this date as 01:00:00 which looks wrong, but that’s actually the correct time. 01:00:00 in UTC+1 is 00:00:00 in UTC, which is the moment described by timestamp 0.

If you want to display the dates you’ve creating from a timestamp in UTC, use date.toUTCString() or fetch and format the consistuent parts of the date using getUTCFullYear(), getUTCMonth() etc.

Please, though, no eval.

new Date(parseInt(jsonDate.slice(6, -1), 10))