So here is my solution (similar to John Vance's answer):
First go here and get a function to detect mobile browsers.
http://detectmobilebrowsers.com/
They have a lot of different ways to detect if you are on mobile, so find one that works with what you are using.
Your HTML page (pseudo code):
If Mobile Then
<input id="selling-date" type="date" placeholder="YYYY-MM-DD" max="2999-12-31" min="2010-01-01" value="2015-01-01" />
else
<input id="selling-date" type="text" class="date-picker" readonly="readonly" placeholder="YYYY-MM-DD" max="2999-12-31" min="2010-01-01" value="2015-01-01" />
JQuery:
$( ".date-picker" ).each(function() {
var min = $( this ).attr("min");
var max = $( this ).attr("max");
$( this ).datepicker({
dateFormat: "yy-mm-dd",
minDate: min,
maxDate: max
});
});
This way you can still use native date selectors in mobile while still setting the min and max dates either way.
The field for non mobile should be read only because if a mobile browser like chrome for ios "requests desktop version" then they can get around the mobile check and you still want to prevent the keyboard from showing up.
However if the field is read only it could look to a user like they cant change the field. You could fix this by changing the CSS to make it look like it isn't read only (ie change border-color to black) but unless you are changing the CSS for all input tags you will find it hard to keep the look consistent across browsers.
To get arround that I just add a calendar image button to the date picker. Just change your JQuery code a bit:
$( ".date-picker" ).each(function() {
var min = $( this ).attr("min");
var max = $( this ).attr("max");
$( this ).datepicker({
dateFormat: "yy-mm-dd",
minDate: min,
maxDate: max,
showOn: "both",
buttonImage: "images/calendar.gif",
buttonImageOnly: true,
buttonText: "Select date"
});
});
Note: you will have to find a suitable image.