Date Validation - Client Side

[dougconnell]

Usage Scenario

I created a Date variable in a Catalog Item which represented the Date Required.  I wanted to check that this data was at least 2 days in the future and NOT on a weekend.

Investigation (Googling)

Initially, I searched the communities for examples of how to Validate dates on the  client side.

Many articles suggested that I use of AJAX to check the date on the server side.  Suffering any latency for such a trivial task as setting dates seamed to be a bit silly.  I finally came across a few examples of client side checking.  Below is another example, for sharing:

 Sample UI Client Script

Below is a sample UI Client Script which runs entirely on the client and validates a Variable of type Date in a Catalog Item.  This script checks to see if the 'date_required' (i.e. NewValue) is >= 2 days in the future and not on a weekend.

function onChange(control, oldValue, newValue, isLoading, isTemplate) {
 
    if (isLoading || newValue === '') {
        return;
    }
     
    //get the new and current date/time as an object
    var dateObjectNow = new Date();
    var dateObjectNew = new Date(newValue);
    //get the dates in days - also use floor to convert valeus to integers
    var dateNow = Math.floor(dateObjectNow.valueOf()/(1000*60*60*24));
    var dateNew = Math.floor(dateObjectNew.valueOf()/(1000*60*60*24));
    // Get day of week (Sunday = 0)
    var dayOfWeek = dateObjectNew.getDay();
 
    // Check Date if date is 2 or more days in the future and not on the weekend.
    var msg;
    if (dateNew >= (dateNow + 2) && dayOfWeek > 0 && dayOfWeek < 6) {
        msg = 'Date is OK';
        g_form.hideFieldMsg('date_required',true);
        g_form.showFieldMsg('date_required',msg,'info',false);
    }
    else {
        msg = 'ERROR: Date must be 2 or more days in the future and not on the weekend.';
        g_form.hideFieldMsg('date_required',true);
        g_form.showFieldMsg('date_required',msg,'error',false);
    }
}

[Jon Barnes]

the main reason people suggest an AJAX call is because the newValue will always be in the user’s selected date/time format and perhaps the Date object won’t always get it right.

For example, could your script handle dates in MM/DD/YYYY, and DD/MM/YYYY?

[dougconnell]

Our ServiceNow instance is based on Sydney and my Browser Client is located in NZ.  We all use the international data format dd/mm/yyyy - so there is no issue.




Also, ServiceNow uses yyyy-mm-dd.  See below.

[dougconnell]

I did some further investigation about issues with dates:

The Date variable type in ServiceNow Catalog Items only accept sets dates in the format: yyyy-mm-dd.   So there is no issues with having different International and US date formats.  Good choice for date format in ServiceNow;  Well done  someone.  Avoids these issues.

[Adam Robbins1]

@Jon BarnesI saw the scenario mentioned in your post.  I ended up accounting for it with the code below.  I statically set a time; however, the same logic used for capturing day, month, and year could also be written to capture hours ('HH'), minutes ('mm'), and seconds ('ss').

var format = g_user_date_time_format;

var day = format.indexOf('dd');

var month = format.indexOf('MM');

var year = format.indexOf('yyyy')

var newDay = newValue.substr(day, 2);

var newMonth = newValue.substr(month, 2);

var newYear = newValue.substr(year, 4);

var newValueDate = newYear + '-' + newMonth + '-' + newDay + ' 18:00:00';

//get the new and current date/time as an object

var dateObjectNow = new Date();

var dateObjectNew = new Date(newValueDate);