DateTime

ion-datetime

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The DateTime component is used to present an interface which makes it easy for users to select dates and times. Tapping on <ion-datetime> will display a picker interface that slides up from the bottom of the page. The picker then displays scrollable columns that can be used to individually select years, months, days, hours and minute values. The DateTime component is similar to the native <input type="datetime-local"> element, however, Ionic's DateTime component makes it easy to display the date and time in a preferred format, and manage the datetime values.

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Date</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="MM/DD/YYYY" [(ngModel)]="myDate"></ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Display and Picker Formats

The DateTime component displays the values in two places: in the <ion-datetime> component, and in the interface that is presented from the bottom of the screen. The following chart lists all of the formats that can be used.

Important: See the Month Names and Day of the Week Names section below on how to use different names for the month and day.

Display Format

The displayFormat input property specifies how a datetime's value should be printed, as formatted text, within the ion-datetime component.

In the following example, the display in the <ion-datetime> will use the month's short name, the numerical day with a leading zero, a comma and the four-digit year. In addition to the date, it will display the time with the hours in the 24-hour format and the minutes. Any character can be used as a separator. An example display using this format is: Jun 17, 2005 11:06.

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Date</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="MMM DD, YYYY HH:mm" [(ngModel)]="myDate"></ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Picker Format

The pickerFormat input property determines which columns should be shown in the interface, the order of the columns, and which format to use within each column. If the pickerFormat input is not provided then it will default to the displayFormat.

In the following example, the display in the <ion-datetime> will use the MM/YYYY format, such as 06/2020. However, the picker interface will display two columns with the month's long name, and the four-digit year.

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Date</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="MM/YYYY" pickerFormat="MMMM YYYY" [(ngModel)]="myDate"></ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Datetime Data

Historically, handling datetime values within JavaScript, or even within HTML inputs, has always been a challenge. Specifically, JavaScript's Date object is notoriously difficult to correctly parse apart datetime strings or to format datetime values. Even worse is how different browsers and JavaScript versions parse various datetime strings differently, especially per locale.

But no worries, all is not lost! Ionic's datetime input has been designed so developers can avoid the common pitfalls, allowing developers to easily format datetime values within the input, and give the user a simple datetime picker for a great user experience.

ISO 8601 Datetime Format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mmZ

Ionic uses the ISO 8601 datetime format for its value. The value is simply a string, rather than using JavaScript's Date object. Additionally, when using the ISO datetime format, it makes it easier to serialize and pass within JSON objects, and sending databases a standardized format which it can be easily parsed if need be.

An ISO format can be used as a simple year, or just the hour and minute, or get more detailed down to the millisecond and timezone. Any of the ISO formats below can be used, and after a user selects a new value, Ionic will continue to use the same ISO format which datetime value was originally given as.

Note that the year is always four-digits, milliseconds (if it's added) is always three-digits, and all others are always two-digits. So the number representing January always has a leading zero, such as 01. Additionally, the hour is always in the 24-hour format, so 00 is 12am on a 12-hour clock, 13 means 1pm, and 23 means 11pm.

It's also important to note that neither the displayFormat or pickerFormat can set the datetime value's output, which is the value that is set by the component's ngModel. The format's are merely for displaying the value as text and the picker's interface, but the datetime's value is always persisted as a valid ISO 8601 datetime string.

Min and Max Datetimes

Dates are infinite in either direction, so for a user's selection there should be at least some form of restricting the dates that can be selected. Be default, the maximum date is to the end of the current year, and the minimum date is from the beginning of the year that was 100 years ago.

To customize the minimum and maximum datetime values, the min and max component inputs can be provided which may make more sense for the app's use-case, rather than the default of the last 100 years. Following the same IS0 8601 format listed in the table above, each component can restrict which dates can be selected by the user. Below is an example of restricting the date selection between the beginning of 2016, and October 31st of 2020:

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Date</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="MMMM YYYY" min="2016" max="2020-10-31" [(ngModel)]="myDate">
  </ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Month Names and Day of the Week Names

At this time, there is no one-size-fits-all standard to automatically choose the correct language/spelling for a month name, or day of the week name, depending on the language or locale. Good news is that there is an Intl.DateTimeFormat standard which most browsers have adopted. However, at this time the standard has not been fully implemented by all popular browsers so Ionic is unavailable to take advantage of it yet. Additionally, Angular also provides an internationalization service, but it is still under heavy development so Ionic does not depend on it at this time.

All things considered, the by far easiest solution is to just provide an array of names if the app needs to use names other than the default English version of month and day names. The month names and day names can be either configured at the app level, or individual ion-datetime level.

App Config Level

import { ionicBootstrap } from 'ionic-angular';

ionicBootstrap(MyApp, customProviders, {
  monthNames: ['janeiro', 'fevereiro', 'mar\u00e7o', ... ],
  monthShortNames: ['jan', 'fev', 'mar', ... ],
  dayNames: ['domingo', 'segunda-feira', 'ter\u00e7a-feira', ... ],
  dayShortNames: ['dom', 'seg', 'ter', ... ],
});

Component Input Level

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Período</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="DDDD MMM D, YYYY" [(ngModel)]="myDate"
    monthNames="janeiro, fevereiro, mar\u00e7o, ..."
    monthShortNames="jan, fev, mar, ..."
    dayNames="domingo, segunda-feira, ter\u00e7a-feira, ..."
    dayShortNames="dom, seg, ter, ..."></ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Advanced Datetime Validation and Manipulation

The datetime picker provides the simplicity of selecting an exact format, and persists the datetime values as a string using the standardized ISO 8601 datetime format. However, it's important to note that ion-datetime does not attempt to solve all situtations when validating and manipulating datetime values. If datetime values need to be parsed from a certain format, or manipulated (such as adding 5 days to a date, subtracting 30 minutes, etc.), or even formatting data to a specific locale, then we highly recommend using moment.js to "Parse, validate, manipulate, and display dates in JavaScript". Moment.js has quickly become our goto standard when dealing with datetimes within JavaScript, but Ionic does not prepackage this dependency since most apps will not require it, and its locale configuration should be decided by the end-developer.

Usage

<ion-item>
  <ion-label>Date</ion-label>
  <ion-datetime displayFormat="MM/DD/YYYY" [(ngModel)]="myDate">
  </ion-datetime>
</ion-item>

Input Properties

Output Events

Sass Variables