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

Question

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.

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Answer 1

In HTML5 as such, there is no way to set the default value of the date field to today’s date? As shown in other answers, the value can be set using JavaScript, and this is usually the best approach if you wish to set the default according to what is current date to the user when the page is loaded.

HTML5 defines the valueAsDate property for input type=date elements, and using it, you could set the initial value directly from an object created e.g. by new Date(). However, e.g. IE 10 does not know that property. (It also lacks genuine support to input type=date, but that’s a different issue.)

So in practice you need to set the value property, and it must be in ISO 8601 conformant notation. Nowadays this can be done rather easily, since we can expect currenty used browsers to support the toISOString method: