title: text input field as jQuery datepicker default date
body: <p>The default date for jQuery's datepicker is the current date, but I need it to be the pre-populated date from my <code>#start_date</code> input field.</p>
  
  <p>This is where I'm at now but it doesn't work.</p>
  
  <pre><code>var start_date = $('#start_date').val();
  $('.datepicker').datepicker("option", "defaultDate", start_date);
  </code></pre>
  
  <pre class="lang-html prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;input type="text" id="start_date" name="start_date" class="datepicker form-control col-sm-6" placeholder="Start" value="&lt;?php (!empty($row['start_date'])?$row['start_date']:'');?&gt;&gt;
  </code></pre>