Parse specific date time format in Javascript

Question

I have a date in the following format:

2012-12-09T02:08:34.6225152Z

I'm using the datejs javascript library and would like the parse the above date, but I can't seem to figure out the proper format string. I've tried the following, but it doesn't work.

Date.parse('2012-12-09T02:08:34.6225152Z', 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffffffZ');

If it's easier, I'm also open to parsing the string in native javascript.

rdiazv · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-09 15:02:42Z

1

DateJS doesn't seems to support milliseconds parsing. There's the u FormatSpecifier on the DateJS extras that could work (haven't tested it).

http://code.google.com/p/datejs/wiki/FormatSpecifiers

answered Dec 9, 2012 at 15:02

rdiazv

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1 Comment

Matt Ruwe Over a year ago

Unfortunately this doesn't work. The DateJs extras stuff is only for output formatting (i.e. toString()), not parsing.

Matt Ruwe · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-18 11:54:15Z

I ended up solving this problem by changing the format of the string as it was sent to Javascript. Instead of 2012-12-09T02:08:34.6225152Z I changed the JSON serializer to output 1363607010099 by using the following code:

var serializer = new JsonNetSerializer(new JsonSerializerSettings { DateFormatHandling = DateFormatHandling.MicrosoftDateFormat, NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore });

I then changed my javascript to parse the date using this function that I found:

String.prototype.toDate = function () { "use strict"; var match = /\/Date\((\d{13})\)\//.exec(this); return match === null ? null : new Date(parseInt(match[1], 10)); };

Finally, I output the date using this bit of code (taking advantage of the DateJS library):

myTime.toDate().toString('h:mm:ss tt dd-MMM-yyyy')

And it works. This seems a bit hackish, so I'm more than open to consider alternatives.

Constructive suggestion: Its a bit ugly to extend the string-object with the toDate function, because not all strings can be converted to a date. Why should that function be available to all possible strings, while you only need it for one specific string only? "some".toDate() makes no sense, while ""today".toDate() or "2013-1-1".toDate() will make sense but returns null. -- just supporting :)
Good point. I'm not suggesting that my solution is a good one, but I saw that the question was still open and wanted to close it with an accepted answer which was the way I ended up solving it. If you have a better alternative to solve the original question, then please post your answer. =)

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