Question

I’m using a jQueryUI datepicker for a simple “From” & “To” date range filter in my ASP.Net MVC web-app. Works fine until I hit a machine which had its datetime format (in the Regional Settings) set to “dd-MM-yy”.

In my controller I’ve a postback action which accepts a custom search object as a parameter which is then passed to the search function. This custom object has the properties for “To” & “From” dates and as usual the binding takes place automatically. Works normal on a machine with date format “MM/dd/yy” but if I set it to “dd/MM/yy” in the regional settings then it is unable to parse the date.

The easiest solution could be to change the datepicker’s format to
“dd-MMM-yyyy” a non-culture specific date format but my client wants
the selected date to be displayed in MM/dd/yyyy format.

Any clean and easy suggestion to handle this at the datepicker or controller level?

Answer 1

You can use an hidden field with a custom format:

HTML:

 <input name="from" type="text" id="from" />
 <input name="hiddenFrom" type="hidden" id="hiddenFrom" />

Javascript:

$("#from").datepicker({
    altField: "#hiddenFrom",
    altFormat: "dd-mm-yy" // or whatever
});

You’ll find documentation about jquery ui date format here