I'm using the excellent (but large) DateJS library to handle dates and times in my webapp. I just came across something that I'm not sure how to handle.
I want my users to be able to enter Time strings only, without a date, but they should be able to enter it in any manner they please. For instance:
- 5:00 pm
- 17:00
- 5:00pm
- 5:00p
- 5p
- etc.
Using Date.parse(value)
converts these strings into a full date, which is exactly what I want. However, it also allows the user to enter any other part of a date string, such as:
- sat 5pm
- 1/1/2010 5pm
- etc.
I'm trying to use DateJS to validate an input field for a time value. Something like:
function validateTime(value) {
return Date.parse(value) !== null;
}
Is there a way to use DateJS features to solve this? There are other SO questions that provide solutions, but if DateJS has a way to do this, I don't really want to add more custom code to my app to do this.
Shortly after asking my question, I discovered that Date.parseExact() can take an array of format strings. Somehow I'm missed that. I managed to get something working with the following code:
function validateTime(input) {
return Date.parseExact(input, [
"H:m",
"h:mt",
"h:m t",
"ht","h t"]) != null ||
Date.parseExact(input, [
"h:mtt",
"h:m tt",
"htt","h tt"]) != null;
};
Note that some formats don't seem to be able to be included together at the same time, which is why I split them into two separate parseExact() calls. In this case, I couldn't include any string that contained a single t
in it with format strings that contained a double tt
in it.
The additive approach seems cumbersome. Takes away the beauty of DateJS in my opinion. I needed the same solution and decided to just sneakily append the date in front of my input string before parsing with DateJS:
var parsed = Date.parse(Date.today().toString('M/d/yyyy') + ' ' + this.value);
if (parsed) {
alert(parsed.toString('h:mm tt'));
}
Now DateJS will not be sniffing around for any of its date-part parsing patterns, as you have already subbed it in.
Hope this helps someone!