Question

Okay I have the following problem. I want to get the current dateTime and then want do check if a date that I enter is bigger than the current DateTime. The format of my dateTime should look like this.

03/11/2012 09:37 AM

Here is the function how I get the current DateTime.

function getCurrentDateTime()
{
    var currentTime = new Date()
    // Date
    var month = currentTime.getMonth() + 1;
    if (month < 10){
        month = "0" + month;
    }
    var day = currentTime.getDate();
    var year = currentTime.getFullYear();

    // Time
    var hours = currentTime.getHours();
    var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();
    if (minutes < 10){
        minutes = "0" + minutes;
    }

    if(hours > 11){
        var dateString = month + "/" + day + "/" + year + " " + hours + ":" + minutes + " " + "PM";
        test = new Date(dateString);
        return dateString ;
    } else {
        var dateString = month + "/" + day + "/" + year + " " + hours + ":" + minutes + " " + "AM";

        return dateString;

    }
}

As you can see how it gives back a string. But when I want to covert it to a date with this function. I get this format Fri May 11 2012 09:37:00 GMT+0200 (Romance Daylight Time)

date = new Date(dateString);

And with this I can’t calculate.

Could anybody help me how I can get the current date in this format so that I can do the check?

Kind regards.

Answer 1

Javascript provides very limited functionality for working with dates out of the box. Use an external library like momentjs.

For example, your function would be reduced to

var stringDate = moment().format("DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm A");

And you could convert that and compare it to the current time with

var earlierDate = moment(stringDate, "DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm A");
if (earlierDate.valueOf() < moment().valueOf()) {
    // earlier indeed
}