Someone finally uses ISO 8601 standard dates but then ...

You are using a nice international standard that JavaScript arguably should understand. But it doesn't.

The problem is that your dates are in ISO 8601 standard format which the built-in Date.parse() can't read.

JavaScript implements the older IETF dates from RFC 822/1123. One solution is to tweak them into the RFC-style, which you can see in RFC1123, and which look like dd month yyyy.

There is coding floating about that can scan the ISO format comprehensively, and now that you know to google for "iso standard date" you can get it. Over here I found this:

Date.prototype.setISO8601 = function (string) {
    var regexp = "([0-9]{4})(-([0-9]{2})(-([0-9]{2})" +
        "(T([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2})(:([0-9]{2})(\.([0-9]+))?)?" +
        "(Z|(([-+])([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2})))?)?)?)?";
    var d = string.match(new RegExp(regexp));

    var offset = 0;
    var date = new Date(d[1], 0, 1);

    if (d[3]) { date.setMonth(d[3] - 1); }
    if (d[5]) { date.setDate(d[5]); }
    if (d[7]) { date.setHours(d[7]); }
    if (d[8]) { date.setMinutes(d[8]); }
    if (d[10]) { date.setSeconds(d[10]); }
    if (d[12]) { date.setMilliseconds(Number("0." + d[12]) * 1000); }
    if (d[14]) {
        offset = (Number(d[16]) * 60) + Number(d[17]);
        offset *= ((d[15] == '-') ? 1 : -1);
    }

    offset -= date.getTimezoneOffset();
    time = (Number(date) + (offset * 60 * 1000));
    this.setTime(Number(time));
}

js> t = new Date()
Sun Nov 01 2009 09:48:41 GMT-0800 (PST)
js> t.setISO8601("2009-11-01")
js> t

Sat Oct 31 2009 17:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)

The 11-01 is reinterpreted in my timezone, as long as all your dates get the same conversion then they should compare reasonably, otherwise you can add TZ info to your string or to the Date object.

Compare < and > just as usual, but anything involving == or === should use a + prefix. Like so:

const x = new Date('2013-05-23');
const y = new Date('2013-05-23');

// less than, greater than is fine:
console.log('x < y', x < y); // false
console.log('x > y', x > y); // false
console.log('x <= y', x <= y); // true
console.log('x >= y', x >= y); // true
console.log('x === y', x === y); // false, oops!

// anything involving '==' or '===' should use the '+' prefix
// it will then compare the dates' millisecond values

console.log('+x === +y', +x === +y); // true