Angular.js and HTML5 date input value — how to get Firefox to show a readable date value in a date input?

Question

I have an HTML5 date input and I would like its value to be set to the value of the date property in my model by default. I\'m not too fussy about formatting since Chrome se

Answer 1

The problem is that value is ignored when ng-model is present.

Firefox, which doesn't currently support type="date", will convert all the values to string. Since you (rightly) want date to be a real Date object and not a string, I think the best choice is to create another variable, for instance dateString, and then link the two variables:

function MainCtrl($scope, dateFilter) {
    $scope.date = new Date();

    $scope.$watch('date', function (date)
    {
        $scope.dateString = dateFilter(date, 'yyyy-MM-dd');
    });

    $scope.$watch('dateString', function (dateString)
    {
        $scope.date = new Date(dateString);
    });
}

Fiddle

The actual structure is for demonstration purposes only. You'd be better off creating your own directive, especially in order to:

• allow formats other than yyyy-MM-dd,
• be able to use NgModelController#$formatters and NgModelController#$parsers rather than the artifical dateString variable (see the documentation on this subject).

Please notice that I've used yyyy-MM-dd, because it's a format directly supported by the JavaScript Date object. In case you want to use another one, you must make the conversion yourself.

---

EDIT

Here is a way to make a clean directive:

myModule.directive(
    'dateInput',
    function(dateFilter) {
        return {
            require: 'ngModel',
            template: '',
            replace: true,
            link: function(scope, elm, attrs, ngModelCtrl) {
                ngModelCtrl.$formatters.unshift(function (modelValue) {
                    return dateFilter(modelValue, 'yyyy-MM-dd');
                });

                ngModelCtrl.$parsers.unshift(function(viewValue) {
                    return new Date(viewValue);
                });
            },
        };
});

Fiddle

That's a basic directive, there's still a lot of room for improvement, for example:

• allow the use of a custom format instead of yyyy-MM-dd,
• check that the date typed by the user is correct.