[ANN] DatePicker

[mat...@jondet.org]

Hi all,
for the application i'm developping I needed a datepicker widget. I've
checked the list archives and couldn't find anything prototype-related.

As I'm new to Prototype and Scriptaculous I decided to give a shot at
it. So you can find all the information regarding the datepicker at my
company's website :
http://www.eulerian.com/en/opensource/datepicker-prototype-scriptaculous

Any feedback, comments are welcomed ! Especially on the js code.

Regards,
Mathieu

[Andrew Kaspick]

Looks good. Might be giving this one a try in my own app.

Thanks

[Gareth Evans]

HI, I was looking at needing to write one of these next week.

I'd be interested in using yours (maybe modified tho, not sure) in my project- is it free to use?

It threw a script error in IE6 btw.

 

Gareth

 

[Kjell Bublitz]

Cool thing :)

You should add different Date formats based on locale aswell. Like:
10.03.2007 or 03-10-07
Here is a german translation for your widget:

'de' : [ 'Januar', 'Februar', 'März', 'April', 'Mai',
'Juni', 'Juli', 'August', 'September', 'Oktober', 'November', 'Dezember' ]

'de' : [ 'Mo', 'Di', 'Mi', 'Do', 'Fr', 'Sa', 'So' ],

'de' : 'schliessen'

--
Regards, Kjell
www.m3nt0r.de

[Kjell Bublitz]

Check out this post from Ben Nolan. Might be interesting for you:
http://www.bennolan.com/articles/2007/02/14/date-prototype-succ

--
Regards, Kjell
www.m3nt0r.de

[Gareth Evans]

I think that succ function might need to be added into core, if it isn't already.

 

Gareth

 

On 3/11/07, Kjell Bublitz <m3nt...@gmail.com> wrote:

Check out this post from Ben Nolan. Might be interesting for you:
http://www.bennolan.com/articles/2007/02/14/date-prototype-succ


On 3/11/07, Kjell Bublitz <m3nt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool thing :)
>
> You should add different Date formats based on locale aswell. Like:
> 10.03.2007 or 03-10-07
> Here is a german translation for your widget:
>

> 'de'    : [ 'Januar', 'Februar', 'M�rz', 'April', 'Mai',

[Kjell Bublitz]

It is :)

http://www.prototypejs.org/api/number/succ

--
Regards, Kjell
www.m3nt0r.de

[Gareth Evans]

That's a succ function on the number object, not the date object though?

[Kjell Bublitz]

You are right. i misunderstood. sorry.

--
Regards, Kjell
www.m3nt0r.de

[mat...@jondet.org]

Kjell Bublitz wrote:
> Cool thing :)

Thanks !

> You should add different Date formats based on locale aswell. Like:
> 10.03.2007 or 03-10-07

This is already handled, if we are in english locale the mm-dd-yyyy
format is used, dd-mm-yyyy is used otherwise.

> Here is a german translation for your widget:
>

> 'de' : [ 'Januar', 'Februar', 'M�rz', 'April', 'Mai',

> 'Juni', 'Juli', 'August', 'September', 'Oktober', 'November', 'Dezember' ]
>
> 'de' : [ 'Mo', 'Di', 'Mi', 'Do', 'Fr', 'Sa', 'So' ],
>
> 'de' : 'schliessen'

Thanks, I'll integrate it in a future release.

Mathieu

[mat...@jondet.org]

mat...@jondet.org wrote:
>> You should add different Date formats based on locale aswell. Like:
>> 10.03.2007 or 03-10-07
>
> This is already handled, if we are in english locale the mm-dd-yyyy
> format is used, dd-mm-yyyy is used otherwise.

Answering too fast, I do handle the case of days and switching if we are
in english, but do not handle the case of the date separator : . or -,
it's only / right now.

I'll add in a future release.

Thanks.

Mathieu

[mat...@jondet.org]

Gareth Evans wrote:
> HI, I was looking at needing to write one of these next week.
> I'd be interested in using yours (maybe modified tho, not sure) in my
> project- is it free to use?

Sure it's free, I should add it to the webpage, but the datepicker.js
file contains a statement indicating it's distributed under the same
termes as Prototype and Scriptaculous, MIT-license.

> It threw a script error in IE6 btw.

Ok, I only tested it under Linux as I don't have a box with IE
available right now. A previous version was working ok under IE7 with no
warnings, maybe I made a mod that triggered something.

Thanks for the report.

Mathieu

[Gareth Evans]

yeah was 'null is null or not an object' or something like that...

May be fixed in 1.5.1 rc1

 

On 3/11/07, mat...@jondet.org <mat...@jondet.org> wrote:

[Gareth Evans]

I will debug on monday if I get time (sunday 2.25 now)

On 3/11/07, Gareth Evans <agr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[RobG]

On Mar 11, 12:19 pm, "math...@jondet.org" <math...@jondet.org> wrote:
> Kjell Bublitz wrote:
> > Cool thing :)
>
> Thanks !
>
> > You should add different Date formats based on locale aswell. Like:
> > 10.03.2007 or 03-10-07
>
> This is already handled, if we are in english locale the mm-dd-yyyy
> format is used, dd-mm-yyyy is used otherwise.

English is not a locale, it is a language spoken in a great many
locales. It is not reasonable to expect that someone using English
will require a date format that is specific to a particular country
that happens to speak English.

The ISO date standard is the place to start for international date
formats:

<URL: http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html
>

--
Rob

[Deco Rior]

A few items:

Personally, I think there are two concerns

The value shown to the user:

This should be the localized value

And the ISO value commonly:

YYYY-MM-DD

We have tried using the ISO value for our customers, but they really
don't like it. But it makes sense to standardize the passed value.

Secondly,Another calendar is spinelz.org

Lastly, the biggest problem I have had with calendars is having their
styles be independent. So many calendars are great until incorporated
into a main page where there are css style classes.

I am looking forward to trying this one!

Great work.

Deco

[Gareth Evans]

To get around the concerns of having to specify the locale why don't we specify a date-format string which has a number of replaces performed on it.

That way, you can just specify the return format, aside from the locale. If the users application wants * as a seperator, then they can specify it.

 

For example (this is psudeocode / half vb [for the date stuff] half js [for the prototype stuff])

I may have used hash incorrectly, but you should get the drift

 

placeholders_hash -> { 'MM': month(currentDate), 'YYYY': year(currentdate), 'YY': substr(year(currentdate),2), 'D': day(currentdate) }

formatString = 'D/MM/YYYY'

var outputString = formatString;

placeholders_hash.each(function (key,value) { outputString = replace(outputString,key,value) });

alert(outputString);
 

Then by changing formatString, you can control the order, the parts used, the seperator etc.

You could make it iso compliant by passing YYYY-MM-DD (assuming all of those placeholders were in the hash)
 

Just an idea...

 

Gareth

[Mathieu Jondet]

Gareth Evans wrote:
> To get around the concerns of having to specify the locale why don't we
> specify a date-format string which has a number of replaces performed on it.
> That way, you can just specify the return format, aside from the locale.
> If the users application wants * as a seperator, then they can specify it.
>
> For example (this is psudeocode / half vb [for the date stuff] half js
> [for the prototype stuff])
> I may have used hash incorrectly, but you should get the drift
>
> placeholders_hash -> { 'MM': month(currentDate), 'YYYY':
> year(currentdate), 'YY': substr(year(currentdate),2), 'D':
> day(currentdate) }
> formatString = 'D/MM/YYYY'
> var outputString = formatString;
> placeholders_hash.each(function (key,value) {
> outputString = replace(outputString,key,value) });
> alert(outputString);
>
> Then by changing formatString, you can control the order, the parts
> used, the seperator etc.
> You could make it iso compliant by passing YYYY-MM-DD (assuming all of
> those placeholders were in the hash)
>
> Just an idea...

Hi Gareth,
ok, I'll will work on this type of approach to give more power to the
user for formatting the date, thanks for the input.
In the meantime I just released an minor update to the initial release
v0.9.1 :
http://www.eulerian.com/en/opensource/datepicker-prototype-scriptaculous
Here is the ChangeLog :
- replace locale by language (RobG)
- add support for german language (Kjell Bublitz)
- add support for portuguese language
- use Prototype.emptyFunction when clickCallBack not defined, should
fix possible bug with IE and null objects (Gareth Evans)
- some code clean-up using Builder.node

Regards,
Mathieu

[Gareth Evans]

While it may be implied, it's also best said:

 

The placeholder hash should contain more than just MM, YYYY and D. It should also contain all the other date part constants- YY for 2 digit year, MMM for short date etc.

There are many different implementations here, you can keep your code tidy by storing the placeholders and the resulting values for each of the calculations in the hash in my earlier example.

 

Feel free to interchange as you see fit, I tried to keep with a scheme

 

m Month as non zero padded number 2

mm Month as a decimal no, zero padded. 02
M Abbreviated month name Feb
MM Full month name February
dd Day as number, zeropadded (08)

d Day of the month (23)
y Day of the year (54)
yy Year without century (98)
yyyy Year with century (1998)
w Weekday (5 (0 is Sunday))

ww Week of year (45)
a Abbreviated day name Fri
A Weekday Name Friday

q Quarter (1)

[Fabian Lange]

Hello,

Have you considered aligning it with DHTML calendar?

http://www.dynarch.com/projects/calendar/

when you have adopted what that guy does you get perhaps a bigger client base. I know many projects using it because it does everything what is needed. Especially it has a mechanism for the formatting

 

.: Fabian

 

---

<br

[Colin Mollenhour]

Agreed, DHTML calendar is pretty close to what SQL uses for date formatting, I would suggest sticking to an existing standard rather than creating a new one.

Colin

[mat...@jondet.org]

Colin Mollenhour wrote:
> Agreed, DHTML calendar is pretty close to what SQL uses for date
> formatting, I would suggest sticking to an existing standard rather than
> creating a new one.
>
> Colin
>

Hi Colin, Fabian, Gareth,
I couldn't agree more. I'll give a look at what could be used as a way
to provide a consistent API and avoid new (inefficient) stuff.

Regards,
Mathieu