Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp

pdxperl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've got a simple dancer app where users can enter dates that will eventually get stored in MySQL in yyyy-mm-dd format. What's the recommended way of validating user entered dates via a web form? I'd assume forcing them to be entered yyyy-mm-dd might be confusing to some, so I'd like to accept a range of standard formats, ie mm-dd-year, mm/dd/year, etc and then convert to MySQL ISO format. Would you try to handle this in javascript or would you instead use Date:Parse or something similar? I've got a javascript date picker, which can guarantee the correct format, but I hate to force that as the only method available.

Comment on Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp

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Re: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by tobyink (Canon) on Jul 27, 2014 at 06:17 UTC
Virtually any modern browser has a build-in date picker... `<input name="myfield" type="date" value="2014-06-27">` [download] toby döt ink	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by pdxperl (Sexton) on Jul 27, 2014 at 06:30 UTC
Thanks, Is this summary not accurate then? http://caniuse.com/input-datetime	[reply]
Re^3: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by tobyink (Canon) on Jul 27, 2014 at 06:54 UTC
For those browsers without support for `type="date"`, the input field falls back to text entry. Also, there exists Modernizr.js, which is a useful shim to add support for recent HTML features to older browsers. toby döt ink	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by pdxperl (Sexton) on Jul 27, 2014 at 07:07 UTC
Re: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Jul 27, 2014 at 06:37 UTC
tobyink offers the modern HTML(5) way. You also asked about validation. You RFC:MUST not trust user input, Validation is only secure on the server side. JS has no say whatsoever in what a hacker decides to send or an old or non-compliant browser submits. Check all user data. I personally tend to reach for Date::Calc’s `check_date` for raw validation. Up to you to decide what ranges are acceptable beyond the pure validity of the YYYY, MM, DD given to it.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by pdxperl (Sexton) on Jul 27, 2014 at 06:49 UTC
Thanks, I was actually starting to use date::simple and just wondered if there was a more modern way.	[reply]
Re^3: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by Anonymous Monk on Jul 27, 2014 at 08:34 UTC
:) HTML::FormFu,HTML::FormHandler, FormValidator::Simple, CGI::FormBuilder are for Re: getopts and duplicit params (multiple / FormValidator::Simple::Validator::SINGLE ), custom error message using Data::FormValidator why formhandler? because good api is hard :)	[reply]
Re: Recommended approach for dealing with user-entered dates in webapp by Laurent_R (Canon) on Jul 27, 2014 at 11:09 UTC
Please be aware that in many (probably most) countries of the world, the most common format for dates is DD/MM/YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY (i.e. with the day in the month before the month). So you'd better make clear to the user what you expect.	[reply]