Need to output javascript date object from a php json_encode call [duplicate]

Question

$array = array('start'=>"new Date(".date("Y",strtotime($start_date)).")");
$myJson = json_encode($array);

The returned json is a string, how can i convert the dates to objects? I'm using the jquery calendar plugin and it wants a date object. Thanks!

Answer 1

Send a date string normally with json and then parse it with javascript: var d = Date.parse("Jul 8, 2005");

Reference: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_parse.asp

Answer 2

Instead of trying to send javascript to the browser send just a unix timestamp and make a date with that on the server

PHP

echo json_encode(array('start' => mktime(date("Y",strtotime($start_date)))));

JS

var val = JSON.parse(json);
var date = new Date(val['start']);