What Causes NaN Errors in Internet Explorer When Using JavaScript\'s Date Constructor?

Date Constructor Malfunctions in IE: A Cross-Browser Comparison

In the realm of web development, JavaScript's Date constructor has proven to be a trusty ally to developers seeking to manipulate dates. However, a curious phenomenon has been observed when using this constructor across major browsers. While Firefox and Chrome happily embrace Date's functionality, Internet Explorer has been known to stumble, returning NaN (Not-a-Number) for certain date operations.

To unravel this enigma, let's delve into the specific issue observed by a developer building a calendar. Their Date construction from a PHP-formatted date string ('m, d, Y') worked flawlessly in Firefox and Chrome, but IE insisted on throwing NaN tantrums.

The Date Construction Problem

<code class="javascript">function buildWeek(dateText){
    var headerDates='';
    var newDate = new Date(dateText);

    for(var d=0;d<7;d++){
        headerDates += '<th>' + newDate + '</th>';
        newDate.setDate(newDate.getDate()+1);
    }                       

    jQuery('div#headerDates').html('<table><tr>'+headerDates+'</tr></table>');
}</code>

The root of the problem lies in the date format. While IE can parse dates in its native format ('YYYY-MM-DD'), it struggles when confronted with the 'm, d, Y' format employed in this code.

The Solution: Standardizing the Date Format

To ensure compatibility across browsers, it's imperative to standardize the date format used in Date construction. The recommended approach is to convert the date string into a format that IE can readily understand. One convenient option is to leverage the split() method to dissect the date string and then pass the individual components into the Date constructor.

For instance, assuming a MySQL datetime/timestamp field returns a string like "2011-08-03 09:15:11", the following code snippet would normalize the format for IE compatibility:

<code class="javascript">var dateStr="2011-08-03 09:15:11"; //returned from mysql timestamp/datetime field
var a=dateStr.split(" ");
var d=a[0].split("-");
var t=a[1].split(":");
var date = new Date(d[0],(d[1]-1),d[2],t[0],t[1],t[2]);</code>

By adopting this approach, you can ensure that your Date operations will play nicely across all major browsers, doing away with inexplicable NaN errors that can wreak havoc on your code.

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