date.js Parse method overrides Javascript Parse method

Question

I'm including the date.js library in my site because I need its functionality.

I have just realized, though, that the standard Javascript parse() method is overwritten by it.

I'm trying to build a line chart in Highcharts, and the data series wants the first element to be be in milliseconds (their demos show them using the Date.UTC() method to achieve this, but my data is returned in a different format).

Short of doing a bunch of string manipulation to put my data into a format that Date.UTC will recognize, is there another way of getting the standard Javascript parse() functionality while date.js is loaded?

Answer 1

I know this isn't a direct solution to your problem, but it may help anyway.

If you want a fully featured date library that doesn't modify the native Date object, I wrote one called Moment.js.

It provides a lot of the things that DateJS provides (formatting, parsing, manipulation, timeago, i18n, etc), but it's smaller, faster, and doesn't ruin the native date prototype.

https://github.com/timrwood/moment

Answer 2

Nope, this is the intended design of date.js. It adds to the "prototype" of the Date object. Some people hate that, some people like it - but you've uncovered one of the drawbacks of this design.

Answer 3

You can tell Highcharts to not use UTC date:

Highcharts.setOptions({
    global: {
        useUTC: false
    }
});

You should do this before you create the chart. Then you won't have to worry about converting your dates to UTC, it will be easier.

Answer 4

after I asked the question, I went ahead and did it this way:

d = Date.parse(data);
            y = d.getFullYear();
            m = d.getMonth();
            d = d.getDate();
            dUTC = Date.UTC(y, m, d);

but will now try your suggestions.