Multiple date compare in javascript

I am trying to validate, get and compare 2 dates.

The dates are co开发者_如何学Pythonming from 2 text inputs and are currently formatted as the following example: 17/01/2011 00:00

How do I convert that string to a date using the Date object?

I'm trying to validate it under these terms:

1. Date must be in the correct format (17/01/2011 00:00)
2. Date must be in the future (How do I do that considering JS runs on Local and date can be set incorrectly on the user's machine?
3. First date must be before second date. (it's a from_date -> to_date input).

Can you please assist?

Thanks,

A slightly different approach,

1. If it is not too late, you can enforce the validity of the date by providing a date / time selection control that will output the date in the format that you required (There should be quite a lot of them out there, see this or this for some. In this way, you don't have to rely on the user to input the date in a textbox where they can input whatever they want. If this is not possible, you can try looking at the input masking that might help the user input the date more accurately in a textbox format, for example see: this or even this that will allow you to input string like "today", "2 weeks from now", etc. This will increase the usability aspect of the form.

2. You might have to revalidate the date on the server side for this. It's always a good idea to double check user inputs both at client side and again in server side. But for client side validation, you can try the datejs libray i mentioned above or create one as per suggestion from Stefanos.

3. Already answered this in #2.

Hope that helps.

As for the format validation you can use a regex to do it.

To get the current time you need to request the data from a server. One option is from the one your users get the web pages using a backing language (php, java, ...). One other option is to request the time from a time server with an http request. The answer could be simle text or an XML, or you may need to communicate with another protocol, like SOAP.

To compare the 2 dates you can convert them to milliseconds and then simply compare the values. Also the JavaScript object Date can be helpful for conversions and comparisons.

You cannot manipulate times and dates without knowing the time zone.

If a string representation of a date does not include the GMT offset, you have to guess the time-zone, unless you add a rule to account for it, or only want the date to be within a day or so accurate.