[javascript] Converting a datetime string to timestamp in Javascript

Question in brief:

What is the easiest way to convert date-month-year hour(24):minute to timestamp?

due to more views add clear question on the top, so that no need to go through background & all if need quick help.

Background :

I have a simple html table and I used jquery sorter to sort my table columns.

Everything is working fine except a date column which is having following format of data,

17-09-2013 10:08
date-month-year hour(24):minute

This column is sorting(alphabetically) but not as I expected(date wise). I tried to use a custom parser as follows,

$.tablesorter.addParser({ 
    id: 'date_column',  // my column ID
    is: function(s) { 
        return false; 
    }, 
    format: function(s) { 
        var timeInMillis = new Date.parse(s);
        return timeInMillis;         
    }, 
    type: 'numeric' 
}); 

Problem : it fails due to new Date.parse(s) .

Question : what is the easiest way to convert date-month-year hour(24):minute to timestamp? then I can skip var timeInMillis = new Date.parse(s); line.

Thanks

Edited :

Sorry about the confusion about milliseconds, actually it should be the timestamp which is a number that represents the current time and date.

For those of us using non-ISO standard date formats, like civilian vernacular 01/01/2001 (mm/dd/YYYY), including time in a 12hour date format with am/pm marks, the following function will return a valid Date object:

function convertDate(date) {

    // # valid js Date and time object format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS)
    var dateTimeParts = date.split(' ');

    // # this assumes time format has NO SPACE between time and am/pm marks.
    if (dateTimeParts[1].indexOf(' ') == -1 && dateTimeParts[2] === undefined) {

        var theTime = dateTimeParts[1];

        // # strip out all except numbers and colon
        var ampm = theTime.replace(/[0-9:]/g, '');

        // # strip out all except letters (for AM/PM)
        var time = theTime.replace(/[[^a-zA-Z]/g, '');

        if (ampm == 'pm') {

            time = time.split(':');

            // # if time is 12:00, don't add 12
            if (time[0] == 12) {
                time = parseInt(time[0]) + ':' + time[1] + ':00';
            } else {
                time = parseInt(time[0]) + 12 + ':' + time[1] + ':00';
            }

        } else { // if AM

            time = time.split(':');

            // # if AM is less than 10 o'clock, add leading zero
            if (time[0] < 10) {
                time = '0' + time[0] + ':' + time[1] + ':00';
            } else {
                time = time[0] + ':' + time[1] + ':00';
            }
        }
    }
    // # create a new date object from only the date part
    var dateObj = new Date(dateTimeParts[0]);

    // # add leading zero to date of the month if less than 10
    var dayOfMonth = (dateObj.getDate() < 10 ? ("0" + dateObj.getDate()) : dateObj.getDate());

    // # parse each date object part and put all parts together
    var yearMoDay = dateObj.getFullYear() + '-' + (dateObj.getMonth() + 1) + '-' + dayOfMonth;

    // # finally combine re-formatted date and re-formatted time!
    var date = new Date(yearMoDay + 'T' + time);

    return date;
}

Usage:

date = convertDate('11/15/2016 2:00pm');

Seems like the problem is with the date format.

 var d = "17-09-2013 10:08",
 dArr = d.split('-'),
 ts = new Date(dArr[1] + "-" + dArr[0] + "-" + dArr[2]).getTime(); // 1379392680000

Date.parse() isn't a constructor, its a static method.

So, just use

var timeInMillis = Date.parse(s);

instead of

var timeInMillis = new Date.parse(s);