Date.parse(2/4/2011 9:34:48 AM)

Question

my input will be from a variable (Ticket.CreationDate) and will look like

2/4/2011 9:34:48 AM (it will vary of course)

Ideally I could pass in the variable as-i

Answer 1

The fact that you have a static format makes a solution simple.

var dateReg = 
    /(\d{1,2})\/(\d{1,2})\/(\d{4})\s*(\d{1,2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2})\s*(AM|PM)/;
function parseDate(input) {
    var year, month, day, hour, minute, second,
        result = dateReg.exec(input);
    if (result) {
        year = +result[3];
        month = +result[1]-1; //added -1 to correct for the zero-based months
        day = +result[2];
        hour = +result[4];
        minute = +result[5];
        second = +result[6];
        if (result[7] === 'PM' && hour !== 12) {
            hour += 12;
        }       
    }
    return new Date(year, month, day, hour, minute, second);
}