Question

I’ve got a chart library that’s expecting date values as though I had called:

var utc = Date.UTC(2012, 1, 15);

but my server is returning date strings. Given a date string of “2/15/2012” is there a simple way to get the same result of calling Date.UTC(2012, 1, 15); ?

What I have below works, but I’m wondering if there’s a simpler way.

//correct result I'm shooting for
var utc = Date.UTC(2012, 1, 15);

//is there an easier way?
var d = new Date("2/15/2012");
var utc2 = Date.UTC(d.getFullYear(), d.getMonth(), d.getDate());

console.log(utc, "  ===  ", utc2, (utc === utc2) ? "SWEET" : "DAMNIT");

Answer 1

If the date is always in m/d/y (or, at least, doesn’t already have a timezone) format, you can append ' UTC' to it and use getTime:

var mdy = "2/15/2012";
var utc = new Date(mdy + " UTC").getTime();

console.log(utc == Date.UTC(2012, 1, 15));