202639 - Date field blank; date picker defaults to year 2103

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[Mark Richards]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401

I just installed Mozilla and attempted some testing.  Included in the test was a
web page I am developing which is a front end for presenting solar water heating
data in graphical form.

Two fields in the form are used for a date picker (javascript).  In both fields,
the date should default to the current day, however the fields appear blank. 
When the date picker is activated by clicking in the field, the correct month
and day appears but the year selected is 2103.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Load page
2.Click mouse in start date field
3.

Actual Results:  
Calendar appears with year 2103.

Expected Results:  
Date should appear in start and end date fields when page loads and should
default to today.

Calendar should appear when field clicked showing current year, month and day.

Since this is under development, the page data should not be made public.

Comment 1

[Phil Schwartau]

Have to mark this one invalid; sorry. The problem is shown below:

function GetDateString()
{
  var d, s = "";
  d = new Date();

      etc. 
      etc. 

  s += (d.getYear() ) + "-";  <<<----------- getYear() has been deprecated

      etc. 	
      etc. 

  return(s);
}


The getYear() method has been deprecated from the ECMA standard
for JavaScript; use getFullYear() instead. See these references:

bug 22964
bug 45764
bug 100123

Comment 2

[Phil Schwartau]

The above explains why you're getting the wrong year. What 
about the failure of the date fields to initialize on load?

Notice that when you load your page in Mozilla, you get an
error in Tools > Web Development > JavaScript Console:

          Error: mainform is not defined
          Source File: http://www.massmicro.com/solarone.php
          Line: 165

That comes from the block of code trying to initialize the
date field:

          <script language='javascript'>
             var d = GetDateString();
             mainform.d1.value = d ;
          </script>	


Note you have not declared |mainform| anywhere in JavaScript.
How is the <script> supposed to recognize it? That's the mistake.

You defined it as an HTML form-name:

          <form name='mainform'  etc. etc. >

The proper way to reference this from JavaScript is via the
document object of the DOM (Document Object Model):

          document.mainform.d1.value = d ;


Note IE has proprietary behavior that puts every HTML name
automatically into the JavaScript namespace, which covers up
the issue. But standard references on the DOM will mention
the correct syntax, and that is what should be used -

Comment 3

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Removing confidential flag from bugs resolved INVALID