ember-pikaday

ember-pikaday is an addon that can be installed with Ember CLI. It gives you a datepicker input component that can be used in your Ember.js application. Pikaday and Moment.js are used in the background so they are added as Bower dependencies to your application.

The component provided by ember-pikaday is fully acceptance tested. It also provides test helpers to interact with the datepicker in your own acceptance tests. It works works in Ember 1.13.1+ or 2.0+, including beta and canary.

Installation

cd your-project-directory
ember install ember-pikaday

Usage

While the input shows a formatted date to the user the bound attribute is always a JavaScript date object. If the application sets the attribute without a user interaction the datepicker updates accordingly.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt}}
</label>

You can also change the default format from DD.MM.YYYY to any format string supported by Moment.js.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt format="MM/DD/YYYY"}}
</label>

You can define a theme which will be a CSS class that can be used as a hook for styling different themes.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt theme="dark-theme"}}
</label>

You can change the yearRange. It defaults to 10. the yearRange can be a single number or two comma separated years.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt yearRange="4"}}
</label>

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt yearRange="2004,2008"}}
</label>

If the second year of the comma separated years is set to currentYear, it sets the maximum selectable year to the current year.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt yearRange="2004,currentYear"}}
</label>

The readonly attribute is supported as binding so you can make the input readonly for mobile or other usecases.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt readonly="readonly"}}
</label>

The placeholder attribute is supported as binding so you can improve the user experience of your interface.

<label>
  Due date:
  {{pikaday-input value=dueAt placeholder="Due date of invoice"}}
</label>

The disabled attribute is supported as binding so you can disabled the datepicker entirely. If the datepicker is shown to the user and it gets disabled it will close the datepicker itself.

<label>
  Due date:
  {{pikaday-input value=dueAt disabled=isDisabled}}
</label>

The firstDay attribute is supported as a binding so you can set the first day of the calendar week. Defaults to Monday.

• 0 = Sunday
• 1 = Monday
• etc...

<label>
  Due date:
  {{pikaday-input value=dueAt firstDay=0}}
</label>

The minDate attribute is supported as a binding so you can set the earliest date that can be selected.

<label>
  Due Date:
  {{pikaday-input value=dueAt minDate=minDate}}
</label>

The maxDate attribute is supported as a binding so you can set the latest date that can be selected.

<label>
  Due Date:
  {{pikaday-input value=dueAt maxDate=maxDate}}
</label>

Return dates in UTC time zone

The date returned by ember-pikaday is in your local time zone due to the JavaScript default behaviour of new Date(). This can lead to problems when your application converts the date to UTC. In additive time zones (e.g. +0010) the resulting converted date could be yesterdays date. You can force the component to return a date with the UTC time zone by passing useUTC=true to it.

<label>
  Start date:
  {{pikaday-input value=startsAt useUTC=true}}
</label>

ember-pikaday will not automatically convert the date to UTC if your application is setting the datepicker value directly!

Data Down, Actions Up

ember-pikaday has its origin prior Embers moved to the Data Down, Actions Up (DDAU) paradigma. Therefore it operates in a two way binding mode by default. If you want to be closer to DDAU you can extend the pikaday-input component and overwrite certain callbacks to accomplish DDAU.

onOpen is called whenever the datepicker opens.
onClose is called whenever the datepicker is closed.
onSelect is called whenever the user selected a date.
onDraw is called whenever the datepicker is (re-) drawn.

Localization

Localizing the datepicker is possible in two steps. To localize the output of the datepicker, this is the formatted string visible in the input field, you simply add the correct Moment.js locale file to your applications Brocfile.js.

If I want to use the Austrian / German locale for example, my Brocfile.js will look like this. To use another locale you only have to change de-at.js to whatever locale you want to use.

app.import('bower_components/moment/moment.js');
app.import('bower_components/moment/locale/de-at.js');
app.import('bower_components/pikaday/pikaday.js');
app.import('bower_components/pikaday/css/pikaday.css');

To localize the datepicker itself, this is the popup you see after clicking the input, a little more work is necessary. The prefered way to do this is writting a custom initializer to inject a localized i18n object into the datepicker component. Naturaly you can use your own localized strings instead of the ones provided by Moment.js.

// app/initializers/setup-pikaday-i18n.js

import Ember from 'ember';
import moment from 'moment';

export default {
  name: 'setup-pikaday-i18n',
  initialize: function(container, application) {
    var i18n = Ember.Object.extend({
      previousMonth: 'Vorheriger Monat',
      nextMonth: 'Nächster Monat',
      months: moment.localeData()._months,
      weekdays: moment.localeData()._weekdays,
      weekdaysShort: moment.localeData()._weekdaysShort
    });

    container.register('pikaday-i18n:main', i18n, { singleton: true });
    application.inject('component:pikaday-input', 'i18n', 'pikaday-i18n:main');
  }
};

Test Helpers

The test helpers provided by ember-pikaday allow you to interact with the datepicker in your acceptance tests. After importing them you are ready to rock and roll.

import { openDatepicker } from 'ember-pikaday/helpers/pikaday';

To open the datepicker use openDatepicker and pass the input element as argument.

openDatepicker(Ember.$('#my-datepicker'));

openDatepicker not only opens the datepicker but also returns an interactor that can be used to interact with it. For example you can select a specific date by using selectDate.

var interactor = openDatepicker(Ember.$('#my-datepicker'));

interactor.selectDate(new Date(1989, 3, 28));

To check if a specific day, month or year is selected there are also relevant methods available.

var interactor = openDatepicker(Ember.$('#my-datepicker'));

interactor.selectDate(new Date(1989, 3, 28));

equal(interactor.selectedYear(), 1989);
equal(interactor.selectedMonth(), 3);
equal(interactor.selectedDay(), 28);

Other Resources

• Video introduction by EmberScreencasts