An example of a date picker in use. When the user clicks on the entry field, a calendar pops up below.
A date picker, popup calendar, date and time picker, or time picker is a graphical user interface widget which allows the user to select a date from a calendar and/or time from a time range. The typical practice is to provide a text box field which, when clicked upon to enter a date, pops up a calendar next to or below the field, allowing the user to populate the field with an appropriate date, or provides a text box with an icon of a calendar such that when the icon is clicked on, the calendar (or time field) appears, or show calendar widget directly (inline).
The date picker provides several advantages, including:
- allowing the user to enter a date by merely clicking on a date in the pop-up calendar as opposed to having to take their hand off the mouse to type in a date.
- validation of dates by restricting date ranges, e.g. only after today and for two weeks later, or only for dates in the past.
- a date range can be entered such that for a set of "from-to" date fields, if the "from" field is filled, the "to" field cannot be set to a date before the "from" field, or if the "to" field is filled, the "from" field cannot be set to a later date than the "to" field.
- can have a "today" button
- can customize the day the week begins on
- Only legal dates can be entered, e.g. February 29, 2100 can't be entered, nor could June 31.
- Date format confusion is eliminated, e.g. is 7/4/10 July 4, 2010, April 7, 2010, or April 10, 2007?
In the case of a time picker, many similar functions are available, such as ensuring the user
- Cannot enter an invalid time (25:18, 4:61).
- Cannot select an out of range time (6:00 pm for a business allowing customers to select their own appointments, but the business closes at 5:30), or during unattended times (like lunch).
- Cannot select an invalid range (can restrict selected time to the nearest 5, 10 or 15 minutes or any range, e.g. 2:30 or 2:45 is okay, but 2:37 is not.)
An example of a programmable date picker is shown in the documentation for the jQuery UI JavaScript user interface library at: http://jqueryui.com/datepicker/
Widgets (List of …) |
|---|
| Command input |
- Adjustment handle
- Button
- Context menu
- Drop-down list
- Hamburger button
- Menu
- Pie menu
|
|---|
| Data input-output |
- Checkbox
- Color picker
- Combo box
- Cycle button
- Date picker
- Grid view
- Light switch
- List box
- List builder
- Radio button
- Scrollbar
- Search box
- Slider
- Spinner
- Text box
|
|---|
| Informational |
- Balloon help
- Head-up display in computing
- Head-up display in video games
- Icon
- Infobar
- Label
- Loading screen
- Progress indicator
- Progress bar
- Splash screen
- Throbber
- Sidebar
- Status bar
- Toast
- Tooltip
|
|---|
| Containers |
- Accordion
- Tree view
- Client-Side Decoration
- Disclosure widget
- Frame/Fieldset
- Menu bar
- Panel
- Popover
- Ribbon
- Tab
- Toolbar
- Window
- Workspace
|
|---|
| Navigational |
- Address bar
- Breadcrumb
- Hyperlink
- Navigation bar
- Virtual desktop
|
|---|
| Special windows |
- Alert dialog box
- Dialog box
- File dialog
- Inspector window
- Modal window
- Palette window
|
|---|
| Related concepts |
- File viewer
- List of graphical user interface elements
- Layout manager
- Look and feel
- Mouseover
- Widget toolkit
- WIMP
|
|---|
| This article does not cite any external source. HandWiki requires at least one external source. See citing external sources. Please help improve this article. Unsourced material may be removed in future. Find sources: "Date picker" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
 | Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date picker. Read more |