Updating angular from 1.2 to 1.3 broke my directive

Question

I have the following directive which I put on input fields that use the angular-ui-bootstrap datepicker:

angular.module('directives.validators.date', [])
.directive('validDate',[ '$filter', function ($filter) {
  return {
    restrict:'A',
    require:'ngModel',
    link: function  (scope, el, attrs, ngModel) {
      var pattern = /^(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\.(0[1-9]|1[012])\.(19|20)\d\d$/;
      ngModel.scope = scope;
      ngModel.attrs = attrs;
      el.on('blur',function() {
        if(typeof ngModel.$viewValue === "object"){        
          var str = $filter('date')(ngModel.$viewValue, "dd.MM.yyyy");
          ngModel.$setViewValue(str);
        }

        if(ngModel.$viewValue){
          if(ngModel.$viewValue!=="" && !pattern.test(ngModel.$viewValue)){
              ngModel.$setValidity("date",false);
          }
        }
      });

      scope.$watch(function () {
          return ngModel.$modelValue;
        }, 
        function() {
        if(ngModel.$pristine){ //if the data has just been fetched, convert it to date format.
          if (typeof ngModel.$viewValue === "number"){
            var date = new Date(ngModel.$viewValue);
            //var str = $filter('date')(date, "dd.MM.yyyy");
            ngModel.$setViewValue(date);
            ngModel.$setPristine(true);
            var formName = $("form")[0].name;
            ngModel.scope[formName].$setPristine(true);
            ngModel.$setValidity("date",true);
          }
        }
        if(ngModel.$viewValue){ //when the filed is changed, if it is corrected set that the date is valid
          if(ngModel.$viewValue==="" || pattern.test(ngModel.$viewValue)){
            ngModel.$setValidity("date",true); 
          }
        }
      });
    }
  };
}]);

I had a problem with the datepicker component that my form wouldn't submit if the datepicker field wasn't touched (even if it had data in it, e.g. when I would edit a resource). It basically counted the form as invalid even though a good date was submitted. This directive fixed that, but when I upgraded my angular to 1.3 the directive no longer works.

What would I need to change to get this directive to work again?

Answer 1

Here you can find something about a breaking change that affects ngModel in 1.3:

Since the HTML5 pattern validation constraint validates the input value, we should also validate against the viewValue. While this worked in core up to Angular 1.2, in 1.3, we changed not only validation, but the way input[date] and input[number] are handled - they parse their input values into Date and Number respectively, which cannot be validated by a regex ...