How to set input type date's default value to today?

Ian Brown picture Ian Brown · Aug 8, 2011 · Viewed 878.2k times · Source

The HTML5 input types are great, Opera's new built-in date picker is a breeze, and Chrome has at least supported the new input type with a spin-wheel implementation.

But is there any way to set the default value of the date field to today's date? With Opera, I can choose 'Today' from the date picker, and as soon as I click on either of the step buttons in Chrome, it increments/decrements from today's date.

I'm not shy to code a solution to this minor problem, but it seems silly to me that both of the browsers are fully aware of the current date but won't automatically just pop it in (at least as a placeholder).

Answer

Tak picture Tak · Aug 8, 2011

Like any HTML input field, the browser will leave it empty unless a default value is specified with the value attribute.

Unfortunately HTML5 doesn't provide a way of specifying 'today' in the value attribute (that I can see), only a RFC3339 valid date like 2011-09-29.

TL;DR Use YYYY-MM-DD date format or it won't display