PickDateShowCase

PickDate Customisable Date Picker ShowCase

Note this is a first attempt at creating a module

PickDateShowCase is an Android App to showcases the PickDate module.

PickDateShowCase itself is a very simple basic App with a single Activity showing 3 buttons.

The first Pick Date button invokes the PickDate module.

The second Pick Date button invokes the PickDate module with the supplied (editable) screen percentage.

The Done button finishes the activity.

PickDate is a class with various methods that culminate in a Date Picker dialog being displayed. The dialog allows the selection of a date which is extracted via the getSelectedDate method (in the PickdateShowCase activity this is used in the activity's onResume() method). The PickDate date picker is intended to be large and simple to cater for those, such as senior citizens, who may not want snazziness for the sake of ease of use.

In it's most simple form you instantiate a PickDate object, use the show method and then use the getSelectedDate method to retrieve the date that has been selected.

Here is an example of the most basic Code (note that getSelectedDate would not work as the activity would be resumed):-

PickDate mypickdate = new PickDate(this); //Instantiate (construct) a PickDate Object
mypickdate.show();  //Show/Invoke the Date Picker
long retrieveddate = mypickdate.getSelectedDate(); //get thedate that was selected.

In the above example the initial (selected) date will be the current date. Default attributes will be applied. Pickdate appears as :-

By default the initial date is the current date. Note many aspects can be changed quite simply. However, selection of the date (clicking a date to select a date, adjusting the month and/or year via the 4 buttons and completion via the OK button) remain unchanged.

There are two additional constructors :-

 Pickdate(Context, InitialDate);
 
 PickDate(Context, InitialDate, ScreenPercentage);

Where:- Context is the context of the invoking Activity. (required by all three constructors).

InitialDate is a long date timestamp e.g. as could be obtained via System.getCCurrentTimeMillis(). It sets the initial date of the date picker.

ScreenPercentage is the percentage, as an int, of the screen that the height of the Dialog will use. The default is 75%. However, this may be automatically adjusted to accomodate a suitable width.

In the following example 55 has been used as the screen percentage :-

This example uses is as above but in LandScape :-

In addition to the constructor, there areadditional methods that can alter attributes of the presented PickDate dialog. All of these methods should be used before invoking the show() method.

Title

The default title is Pick a Date. This can be changed using the setTitle(title), where title is a string.

e.g. mypickdate.setTitle("My Custom Title");

The background colour of the title area (the entire dialog if setOuterBackground or setInnerBackground methods aren't used) can be altered using the setTitleBackgroundColour(colour). Where colour is an argb int.

e.g. mypickdate.setTitleBackgroundColour(0xff0000aa); along with mypickdate.setTitle("My Custom Title"); will result in:-

Outer and Inner Backgrounds

Methods setOuterBackgroundColour(colour) and setInnerBackGroundColour(colour) will alter the outer and inner Background colours respectively. The Outer Background emcompasses the entire dialog . The Inner Background is slightly smaller than the Outer Background, thus catering for a border (if you look at the defaults screenshots above you will notice a border).

Here is an example where the Title Text and Title Background are set as in the previous scren shot and with the Outer and inner Backgrounds set using :-

    mypickdate.setTitle("My Custom Title");
    mypickdate.setTitleBackgroundColour(0xff0000aa); // BLUE
    mypickdate.setOuterBackgroundColour(0xff7777ff); // LIGHT BLUE
    mypickdate.setInnerBackGroundColour(0xff3333ff); // LIGHTISH BLUE

The Selected Date Display

The currently selected date appears immediately below the title. The colour can be changed using the setDateDisplayTextColour(colour) method. The following code would set it to black:-

    mypickdate.setDateDisplayTextColour(0xff000000);

Cells

The Calendar like Date grid is comprised of 3 types of cells:-

1. Dates that are not in the current month; these appear at the start/top and at the end (these by default are dimmed).
2. Dates that are in the current month and
3. The currently Selected Date.

Above the Date cells (DateGrid) are headings for each column which equate to the respective day of the week (Mon, Tue ...).

The text colour of the column headings can be changed using the setDateGridHeadingsTextColour(colour) method e.g.

    mypickdate.setDateGridHeadingsTextColour(0xffff0000) // RED

The text colour of each type of cell can be changed with setNotInMonthCellTextColour(colour), setInMonthCellTextColour(colour) and setSelectedCellTextColour(colour) for cell types 1,2 and 3 respectively.

e.g.

    mypickdate.setNotInMonthCellTextColour(0xffffff00);  // YELLOW
    mypickdate.setInMonthCellTextColour(0xffffffff);     // WHITE
    mypickdate.setSelectedCellTextColour(0xff00ff00);    // GREEN

The colour of the selected cell's hightlight can be changed using selectedcellhighlightcolour(colour)

e.g.

    mypickdate.setSelectedcellHightColour(0xffffff00);  // YELLOW again

The Highlight can also be disabled using showSelectedCellHighlight(false); or enabled (it is by default) using mypickdate.showSelectedCellHighlight(true);.

The background of the selected cell can also be changed using setSelectedCellBackgroundColour(colour).

e.g. mypickdate.setSelectedCellBackgroundColour(0xffff0000); // YELLOW

with the highlight still on :-

or with

    mypickdate.showSelectedCellHighlight(false);
    mypickdate.setSelectedCellBackgroundColour(0xffff0000); // YELLOW