How to correctly use JavaScript indexOf in a date array

Question

Here is the code:

var collection = [new Date(2014, 11, 25), new Date(2014, 11, 24)];
var d=new Date(2014, 11, 24);

var idx= collection.indexOf(d);

I guess the variable idx should have a value of 1 since it is the second value in the array collection. But it turns out to be -1.

Why is that? Is there any special thing for the JavaScript Date type I need to pay attention?

Here is a snippet:

(function() {

  var collection = [new Date(2014, 11, 25), new Date(2014, 11, 24)];
  var d = new Date(2014, 11, 24);

  var idx1 = collection.indexOf(d);

  var intArray = [1, 3, 4, 5];
  var idx2 = intArray.indexOf(4);

  $('#btnTry1').on('click', function() {
    $('#result1').val(idx1);
  });

  $('#btnTry2').on('click', function() {
    $('#result2').val(idx2);
  });
})();

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
Index:
<input type="text" id="result1" value="">
<button id="btnTry1">Find index in a date array</button>
<br />Index:
<input type="text" id="result2" value="">
<button id="btnTry2">Find index in a regular array</button>

Answer 1

Two Objects will never be equal unless you serialise them. Lucky, Date is pretty easy to serialise as an integer.

var collection = [new Date(2014, 11, 25), new Date(2014, 11, 24)],
    d = new Date(2014, 11, 24),
    idx;

idx = collection.map(Number).indexOf(+d); // 1
//              ^^^^^^^^^^^^         ^ serialisation steps

Answer 2

Two different objects are never equal to each other, even if they have the same properties / values. Here is a forward looking answer to the problem:

ECMAScript 6 introduces Array#findIndex which accepts a comparison callback:

var index = collection.findIndex(function(x) { 
    return x.valueOf() === d.valueOf(); 
});

Browser support isn't great yet though.