What would be the prefered way to initialize a JS array in ASP.NET MVC 3 with Razor with a value I have in my model/view model ?
For example to initialize an array of strings representing dates :
<script type="text/javascript">
var activeDates = ["7-21-2011", "7-22-2011"];
</script>
with
public class MyViewModel
{
public DateTime[] ActiveDates { get; set; }
}
I don't quite understand the relation between JS and ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor. Javascript runs on the client side no matter which technology has been used on the server to generate the page. So on javascript an array is an array.
There are a couple of possibilities to define arrays of objects in javascript
var activeDates = [ '7-21-2011', '7-22-2011' ];
or:
var activeDates = new Array();
activeArrays.push('7-21-2011');
activeArrays.push('7-22-2011');
or yet:
var activeDates = new Array();
activeArrays[0] = '7-21-2011';
activeArrays[1] = '7-22-2011';
At th end all those represent the same array. But it is an array of strings, not dates.
If you wanted to have an array of dates, here's what you could do:
var activeDates = [
new Date(2011, 6, 21, 0, 0, 0, 0),
new Date(2011, 6, 22, 0, 0, 0, 0)
];
Now the only relation I can see with your question to ASP.NET MVC is that you probably have some array on your view model:
public class MyViewModel
{
public DateTime[] ActiveDates { get; set; }
}
that you wanted to serialize and manipulate in a javascript array. In this case here's the syntax:
@model MyViewModel
<script type="text/javascript">
var activeDates = @Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Model.ActiveDates));
</script>
Now because of the way DateTime fields are JSON serialized in .NET you will end up with the following in the generated HTML:
var activeDates = ["\/Date(1309471200000)\/","\/Date(1311199200000)\/"];
and if you wanted to convert this array of strings into an array of actual javascript dates:
var dates = $.map(activeDates, function(date, index) {
date = date.replace('/Date(', '').replace(')/', '');
return new Date(parseInt(date));
});
I just happen to do this yesterday and came up with this solution (if you want it to look like the output you have in your question - I was using this with jqplot):
<script type="text/javascript">
var activeDates = ['@Html.Raw(string.Join("', '", @ActiveDates.Select(f => string.Format("{0:MM-dd-yyyy}", f)).ToArray()))']
</script>