Client's first day of the week

Question

Is it possible to determine regional settings of the client's machine, using pure javascript? I need to get first day of the week. Is it Sunday or Monday.

Answer 1

I could not find any out-of-the-box solutions for you, but if you want to persist this endeavor you may find the following ideas useful:

You can detect the locale of the browser using one of the following functions in JavaScript:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/detect-foreign-language-support-using-javascript/5069931

Then, you have to map the locale (language) to the preferred start day of the week. You could create JavaScript arrays in a separate source file using a local (server side) scripting language with I18N support:

How to determine the first day of week in python

(shows Java and Python example)

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As an alternative, YUI, a JavaScript framework, provides a rich internationalization framework. Although it may be a bit heavy for your needs, and I couldn't find a function that would provide you the first day of the week, it may come in handy for your application:

http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/intl/

You can add the first day of the week attribute to the resource bundles yourself (or log a ticket with tem). For an example of the French resource bundle:

http://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?3.3.0/build/datatype/lang/datatype-date_fr-FR.js

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There also is a jQuery plugin for i18n support:

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jquery_i18n_properties

But it looks like that it doesn't come with usable resource bundles.

Answer 2

The library datejs can do things like that. Also check this discussion

Answer 3

The only sure way is to ask the visitor.

<fieldset id="firstdayofweekFieldset">
<legend>First Day Of the Week</legend>
<label>Sunday <input type="radio" name="firstdayofweek" value="0" checked></label>
<label>Monday <input type="radio" name="firstdayofweek" value="1" ></label>
</fieldset>