Setting default date for Jqueryui datepicker

Question

I have a simple form for generating reports that I am adding a jqueryUI datepicker to. The problem I am having is when I try to repopulate the fields with the info from the user.

Jquery seems to be resetting the default value on my date fields (currently, it picks 2 different dates in July). How can I set it back to the user submitted value?

My current code:

<form method="post" action="">
        Username: <input type="text" size="12" name="username" required  value="foo" />
        Password: <input type="password" size="12" name="password" required value="bar" />
        Start Date: <input id="startdate" type="text" size="12" name="startday" required  value="06/28/2012" />
        End Date: <input id="enddate" type="text" size="12" name="endday" required  value="06/30/2012" />

        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(function(){
                $("#startdate").datepicker();
                $("#enddate").datepicker();
            });
        </script>
        <input type="submit">
    </form>

Answer 1

Set the date to highlight on first opening if the field is blank. Specify either an actual date via a Date object or as a string in the current dateFormat, or a number of days from today (eg +7) or a string of values and periods ('y' for years, 'm' for months, 'w' for weeks, 'd' for days, eg '+1m +7d'), or null for today.

Initialize a datepicker with the defaultDate option specified.

$( ".selector" ).datepicker({ defaultDate: +7 });

Get or set the defaultDate option, after init.

//getter
var defaultDate = $( ".selector" ).datepicker( "option", "defaultDate" );

//setter
$( ".selector" ).datepicker( "option", "defaultDate", +7 );

http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/#option-defaultDate

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/iambriansreed/gMNrZ/

Answer 2

You can do this while populating your date:

$( "#startdate" ).datepicker( "setDate" , date );

see this

Answer 3

http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Datepicker#option-minDate

  var dateOptions = { 
  dateFormat: "mm/dd/yy", 
  constrainInput: true, 
  gotoCurrent: true, 
  minDate: new Date()
  };

  $('.date').datepicker(dateOptions);