[Ext 2.0] Ext.ux.MagicDate

[ElliotS]

Based on 'A better way of entering dates (http://simonwillison.net/2003/Oct/6/betterDateInput/)' by Simon Willison this is a new class that will allow a user to enter many date formats as well as plain english.

Some examples :

today
tomorrow
yesterday
next week
last year
3 days ago
2 years from now
next tuesday


It also has a long list of date patterns which are also checked.

I am registering MagicDateField as the default date field using
Ext.reg('datefield', Ext.ux.MagicDateField);
so it requires no changes to existing applications.... (as long as you use xtype ;P)

An example of adding a custom regexs

Ext.ux.MagicDate.regex.push(
// Elliot's birthday
{
re: /^elliot/i,
handler: function(bits) {
return Date.parseDate('29/11/1983', 'd/m/Y');
}
}
);

Ext.ux.MagicDate.regex.push(
// Start of current financial year
{
re: /^sf/i,
handler: function(bits) {

var now = new Date();
var sofy = Date.parseDate("Jul", "M").getFirstDateOfMonth();

if (now < sofy) {
sofy.setFullYear(sofy.getFullYear() - 1);
}

return sofy;
}
}
);


By default it is using european style dates (I'm an Aussie), but I've included commented out american style.

I'd love to hear any feedback or bugs.... otherwise enjoy! Trust me, clients will be impressed ;)

BTW if you just wanted more date patterns (without the regular expressions)... you could just do
Ext.form.DateField.prototype.altFormats = Ext.ux.MagicDate.patterns.join('|');

[brian.moeskau]

Nice idea! I haven't tested the code directly, but glancing through it, are you missing this at the end of your switch statement?

case 'thirty': bits[1] = 30; break;

To handle 30 and 31? It would be real nice if the strings could be factored out of the code for locale support, but for this class, based on how regexes are used, that would probably make it hopelessly complex. For English speakers though, this should be a great extension.

[ElliotS]

The regexes weren't done by me, I just included them =)
I'll make whatever cleanups people can come up with.

[jack.slocum]

For the regexs you can do:

new RegExp('today', 'i'); instead of /today/i and then take it to the next step:

Ext.ux.MagicDate.today = 'today';

then:

re: new RegExp(Ext.escapeRe(Ext.ux.MagicDate.today), 'i')

The a locale file could exist like the standard Ext locale files.

[JeffHowden]

There are certain aspects of Simon's work that are broken, including no support for times. I've implemented my own versions of this in a non-Ext environment. I'd love to collaborate on this to produce a highly polished version for Ext.

[ElliotS]

There are certain aspects of Simon's work that are broken, including no support for times. I've implemented my own versions of this in a non-Ext environment. I'd love to collaborate on this to produce a highly polished version for Ext.

Brilliant! It doesn't sound like you need much help but I'd be happy to provide what I can. It would be good to have a clean implementation anyway because of the licensing (and it would be nice to have it included with ext ;)

[kfuglsang]

I for one would love to have a localized version of this; We are about to start working on a web-interface for our ERP-system that has similar functions in date-fields - if I could emulate these on the web it'd be really great!

Hoping to see updates to this!

Best regards
Kenneth
Denmark

[ElliotS]

I for one would love to have a localized version of this; We are about to start working on a web-interface for our ERP-system that has similar functions in date-fields - if I could emulate these on the web it'd be really great!

Hoping to see updates to this!

Had to jump back to Java-land for a while... but I'll try and get a much cleaner release out this weekend. Glad to see it might be used =)

[mystix]

:D how did i ever miss this thread??? nice find =D>


There are certain aspects of Simon's work that are broken, including no support for times. I've implemented my own versions of this in a non-Ext environment. I'd love to collaborate on this to produce a highly polished version for Ext.

i'm in. ;)

[DigitalSkyline]

Has there been any changes/progress on this?

[Troy Wolf]

I am interested in any utilities that make entering and validating times easier. For example, I have an application where the user needs to enter a range of minutes where the values may be: 11:04 to 11:07.

I've subscribed to this thread in hopes Jeff finds the time/motivation/encouragement to develop his idea into something the community can use. ~o)

[mystix]

tried http://www.datejs.com/ ?

looks interesting. plus there's detailed instructions on getting it to work with Ext:
http://groups.google.com/group/datejs/browse_thread/thread/b343b2eb7372405c/d7eff63a47a0127f?lnk=gst&q=ext#d7eff63a47a0127f

[ram]

I would love to see datejs (http://www.datejs.com) integrated. There's options for date parsing, formatting and date arithmetic in there that would be pretty useful.

Or to avoid the dependancy, it would be great if ExtJS supported pluggable date interface to allow integration by the users.

[Animal]

Shouldn't this be an enhancement, or a plugin to the regular date parsing code.

I like the idea, and we have a similar scheme added to our date fields to allow "today", "tomorrow", "n[ext] m[onday]" "fdnm" (first day of next month) "-3" (three days ago) "-2y" (2 years ago) etc etc. So an internationalized, native Ext version of this would be great. It would probably shrink our codebase.

[Troy Wolf]

Shouldn't this be an enhancement, or a plugin to the regular date parsing code.

I like the idea, and we have a similar scheme added to our date fields to allow "today", "tomorrow", "n[ext] m[onday]" "fdnm" (first day of next month) "-3" (three days ago) "-2y" (2 years ago) etc etc. So an internationalized, native Ext version of this would be great. It would probably shrink our codebase.

+1 ~o)