//takes a Date object, and returns a string in YYYY-MM-DD format
	function dateToMySqlDate(d) {
		var month = (d.getMonth()+1);
		if (month < 10)
			month = '0' + month;
		var day = d.getDate();
		if (day < 10)
			day = '0' + day;
		return d.getFullYear() + '-' + month + '-' + day;
	}
	
		
	//a basic json_decode abstraction
	function dejson(text) {
		var data = eval("(" + text + ")");
		return data;
	}
	
	
	function prepend_to(str, length, character) {
		var i=0;
		while(str.length < length)
			str = character + str;
		return str.slice(str.length-length, str.length);
	}

	function money_format(number) {
		var price = new Number(number);
		if (price.toFixed) //if browser supports toFixed() method
			price = '' + price.toFixed(2)
		return '$' + price;
	}