how to parse string into a date pattern using dojo

Question

Hi, I have a value as '05/17/2010' I would like to get it as May 17, 2010 by using dojo.date.locale.I have tried using the dojo.date.locale.parse as follows :

x = '05/17/2010' var x= dojo.date.locale.parse(x, {datePattern: "MM/dd/yyyy", selector: "date"}); alert(x)

This doesnt give me the desired date pattern

I also tried replacing the pattern as datePattern : "MMMM d, yyyy" but it returns me null.

Any help highly appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this works - though after your initial declaration of x, there is no semicolon before setting it a second time. I broke your code into three lines:

var x = '05/17/2010';
x = dojo.date.locale.parse(x, {datePattern: "MM/dd/yyyy", selector: "date"});
alert (x);

Perhaps it was just a matter of x not being set initially?

Answer 2

dojo.date.locale.parse takes a formatted string and returns a Javascript Date object.

var x = dojo.date.locale.parse('05/17/2010', {datePattern: "MM/dd/yyyy", selector: "date"});

When you say

alert(x);

that coerces x to a string using the Date.toString() method, which varies by browser, but will give you output like what you got -- Mon May 17 2010 00:00:00 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)

If you want to then format the date a special way, pass the result of your parse to dojo.date.locale.format with a specific date format:

var y = dojo.date.locale.format(x, {datePattern:"MMMM d, yyyy", selector: 'date'});