Set today's date as default date in jQuery UI datepicker [duplicate]

Answer 1

Note: When you pass setDate, you are calling a method which assumes the datepicker has already been initialized on that object.

$(function() {    
   $('#date').datepicker();
   $('#date').datepicker('setDate', '04/23/2014');
});

Test: http://jsfiddle.net/wimarbueno/hQkec/1/