Develop Reference

How to programatically dismiss the calendar of a DateTimePicker

I am working on a Windows Form that uses a good amount of DateTimePicker controls.
As per spec, the controllers need to show 'no date' initially till user manually selects a date.
As per the DateTimePicker functionality, we cant assign 'nothing' as a value.
So what we do is set a default minimum date, and then change the custom format of the control to "", to give the illusion of an empty field.
A quirk we have found is that when the user clicks on the DateTimePicker and selects a new date for the first time, his initial click does not dismiss the calendar. So instead the calendar persists, and the user has to manually click outside the control to dismiss the calendar.
To make the user experience slightly worse, while in this state the calendar is immune to any further date selection. So the date selection is stuck with the initially selected date, and the user needs to click out.
Once a date has been selected by the control, selecting a new date dismisses the calendar as expected.
My best guess would be that it would have something to do with the custom format that is there originally, which causes a hiccup with the control when a new properly formatted date is selected.
I am trying to find a way to 'force' the calendar to dismiss if open on value change, but I am not finding the way to do this.
I have even tried to set focus elsewhere on value change, but no luck either.
Has anybody else experienced this behavior and/or know of a way around it?
Thanks!
Some of the code-----------
//if dateTime property has not been saved, then call ClearDateTime on the controller, else display the saved value.
public static void ClearDateTime(DateTimePicker dtp)
{
dtp.Value = DateTime.Today.AddDays(-1);
//set the format
dtp.Format = System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePickerFormat.Custom;
// set custom format to empty
dtp.CustomFormat = " " ;
}
// When value is changed/date is selected
private void DateTimePicker_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MainFormUtilities.ShowDateTime(this.DateTimePicker);
this.LockFormDown();
}
public static void ShowDateTime(DateTimePicker dtp)
{
dtp.Format = System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePickerFormat.Long;
}

Essentially you need to manually raise the CloseUp event, please refer to the solutions here, How can I programmatically close the dropdown calendar of a datetimepicker or update the dropdown calendar to reflect the .Value property?.

I had a similar situation where a client insisted on having the field show no date (appear blank). I gave up on trying to hack the standard .NET DateTimePicker and used the DevExpress DateEdit control which does allow a blank value.

The solution I have pursued that was most practical for my project was the suggestion by Reniuz, to use a checkbox to control the values and behaviour of the DateTimePicker.
If a user wants to add a date, he selects the checkbox which enables the Picker and defaults to todays date.
If he wants to clear the date (ie not submit a date after all) he unchecks the checkbox which clears the picker with a empty format and we save nothing to the database.
If I had the points I would upvote all the other suggestions. They were helpful, but this solution seemed to be the practical path for us. Thanks to all again!

Selection in Date Control

Now, I am working with asp.net , C# and I have made custom controls . In my custom controls especially in Date control, I want to select only month and day part in OnFocus Event.
Right Now, I have wrote
control.select();
then , as usual, the text of the control(2012/08/04) will be selected.
But now I want to give selection only on the part of the month and day(08/04). I am searching many ways to do it. But I haven't got any ways until now. So I would like to know that Can I give a selection on only month and day part(08/24) of a Date Control.
With regards

Restricting C# DatePicker

I need to give my users a way of selecting any valid Saturday in a WPF app. Right now, I just use the DatePicker and error if the day of the week isn't Saturday.
DateTime selectedDate = Convert.ToDateTime(datePicker1.ToString());
if (selectedDate.DayOfWeek != DayOfWeek.Saturday)
{
MessageBox.Show("Please pick a Saturday");
}
I'd rather do it in the control and simply slide back to the next Saturday or make Sun-Fri unclickable. This should be easy, but I'm drawing a blank.

I think you want to look at the BlackoutDates property. You can subscribe to the DisplayDateChanged Event to catch when the user switches months and reinitialize the list of BlackoutDates for that new month.

Depending on how clear you need to be to the user, you could use subtle color highlighting of the control (forecolor, backcolor) to indicate an error. Then use the message box for if they try to ignore the warning.

Display only chosen dates in datepicker

I have history window with date picker but there’s some days without any record in DataBase, I want to disable this days in the datepicker.
Any ideas please.
Thank you

You can use the DayRender event handler for disabling the dates in the datepicker. Refer this sample site to know.

Have a look at the DatePicker.BlackoutDates Property. Dates in this collection will appear as disabled on the drop-down calendar.

Custom calendar drag drop event: Find date dropped to

I've been working in silverlight to do a date-oriented application. I started off with changing the calendar template to contain a listbox on every date, and I created a listbox containing simple items.
I implemented an easy drag drop on both those elements, so now I can drag from the listbox containing the items to the listbox on a date and have an event.
Downside is: In the event, I don't know which date it was dropped to.
How can I figure this out?
Please note: The date dropped to is not necessarily the date currently selected...

As it turns out, using a different drag drop implementation (http://silverlightdragdrop.codeplex.com/) got me to the date relatively easy:
DateTime datetime = (DateTime)((DropTarget)sender).DataContext;
All thanks for viewing and thinking...