title: Highcharts: How to plot date field in x-axis?
body: <p>I want to plot a <code>Highcharts</code> <code>area chart</code> region-wise i.e. country-wise population in a year.<br>
  I have a tab delimited data with schema (date(mm/dd/yyyy), country, population):</p>
  
  <pre><code>12/29/2014  india   1853
  12/29/2014  france  1953
  01/05/2015  india   5087
  01/05/2015  china   11672
  01/05/2015  france  8493
  01/12/2015  china   9516
  01/26/2015  france  10856
  01/26/2015  india   3078
  01/26/2015  china   37202
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am not able to make my x-axis date-ranged i.e. x-axis values starting from <code>12/01/2014</code> to <code>01/31/2015</code>.  </p>
  
  <p>I saw the example in <a href="https://jsfiddle.net/gh/get/library/pure/highcharts/highcharts/tree/master/samples/highcharts/demo/area-basic/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">JSFiddle</a> but that example is confusing me even more: their data does not have any date value, yet they are able to plot the "USA" and "Russia" warhead count in a year:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Highcharts.chart('container', {
      chart: {
          type: 'area'
      },
      title: {
          text: 'Randon Plot for demo'
      },
      subtitle: {
          text: 'Sources: '
      },
      xAxis: {
          type: 'datetime',
          allowDecimals: false,
          labels: {
              formatter: function () {
                  return this.value; // clean, unformatted number for year
              }
          }
      },
      yAxis: {
          title: {
              text: 'Nuclear weapon states'
          },
          labels: {
              formatter: function () {
                  return this.value / 1000 + 'k';
              }
          }
      },
      tooltip: {
          pointFormat: '{series.name} had stockpiled &lt;b&gt;{point.y:,.0f}&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;warheads in {point.x}'
      },
      plotOptions: {
          area: {
              pointStart: 1940,
              marker: {
                  enabled: false,
                  symbol: 'circle',
                  radius: 2,
                  states: {
                      hover: {
                          enabled: true
                      }
                  }
              }
          }
      },
      series: [{
          name: 'USA',
          data: [
              null, null, null, null, null, 6, 11, 32, 110, 235,
              369, 640, 1005, 1436, 2063, 3057, 4618, 6444, 9822, 15468,
              20434, 24126, 27387, 29459, 31056, 31982, 32040, 31233, 29224, 27342,
              26662, 26956, 27912, 28999, 28965, 27826, 25579, 25722, 24826, 24605,
              24304, 23464, 23708, 24099, 24357, 24237, 24401, 24344, 23586, 22380,
              21004, 17287, 14747, 13076, 12555, 12144, 11009, 10950, 10871, 10824,
              10577, 10527, 10475, 10421, 10358, 10295, 10104, 9914, 9620, 9326,
              5113, 5113, 4954, 4804, 4761, 4717, 4368, 4018
          ]
      }, {
          name: 'USSR/Russia',
          data: [null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null,
              5, 25, 50, 120, 150, 200, 426, 660, 869, 1060,
              1605, 2471, 3322, 4238, 5221, 6129, 7089, 8339, 9399, 10538,
              11643, 13092, 14478, 15915, 17385, 19055, 21205, 23044, 25393, 27935,
              30062, 32049, 33952, 35804, 37431, 39197, 45000, 43000, 41000, 39000,
              37000, 35000, 33000, 31000, 29000, 27000, 25000, 24000, 23000, 22000,
              21000, 20000, 19000, 18000, 18000, 17000, 16000, 15537, 14162, 12787,
              12600, 11400, 5500, 4512, 4502, 4502, 4500, 4500
          ]
      }]
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How do I fit in my data into this example ?</p>