DatePickerDialog Demo

This demo shows you how to use DatePickerDialog. You will see a warning “showDialog is deprecated” when you use “showDialog” method. First of all you could use, as of today, “showDialog” even though the message warns you. This link (http://www.technotalkative.com/android-datepickerdialog-example/) is an example that you can still use. However we do not know when it will stop working anyway since the method had been deprecated anyway.

Previously we used to use

• showDialog(int id);
• onCreateDialog(int id);

“showDialog” will be called in a handler of a button or something. And we need to prepare the onCreateDialog callback something like below.

@Override
protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int id) {
    switch (id) {
    case DATE_DIALOG_ID:
        return new DatePickerDialog(this, mDateSetListener, mYear, mMonth, mDay);
    }
    return null;
}

Android’s API Guides say “you should use a DialogFragment as a container for your dialog.” I do not want to create a DialogFragment to use DatePickerDialog. Many recently tutorials explain how to use DialogFragment to use even simple dialogs. Here is a good news. We could use DatePickerDialog without knowing DialogFragment.

The idea of the new approach is that we create an instance of the “DatePickerDialog” class and set properties before we show the dialog by the “show” method. I think that this is a more integrated way to manage dialogs.

mDatePickerDialog = new DatePickerDialog(v.getContext(), mDateSetListener,
                                         mYear, mMonth, mDay);
mDatePickerDialog.setCancelable(true);
mDatePickerDialog.setTitle("Pick a date");
mDatePickerDialog.show();
//showDialog(DATE_DIALOG_ID);

Full source code is as below.

package edu.kettering.datepickerdemoactivity;

import java.util.Calendar;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.app.DatePickerDialog;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.DatePicker;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class DatePickerDemoActivity extends Activity {
  private TextView mDateDisplay;
  private Button mPickDate;
  private int mYear;
  private int mMonth;
  private int mDay;
  private DatePickerDialog mDatePickerDialog;

  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_date_picker_demo);

    // get the current date
    final Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    mYear = c.get(Calendar.YEAR);
    mMonth = c.get(Calendar.MONTH);
    mDay = c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);

    // get references of views
    mDateDisplay = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.dateDisplay);
    mPickDate = (Button) findViewById(R.id.pickDate);

    // add a click listener to the button
    mPickDate.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
      public void onClick(View v) {
        mDatePickerDialog = new DatePickerDialog(v.getContext(),
                         mDateSetListener, mYear, mMonth, mDay);
        mDatePickerDialog.setCancelable(true);
        mDatePickerDialog.setTitle("Pick a date");
        mDatePickerDialog.show();
        //showDialog(DATE_DIALOG_ID);
      }
    });
    // display the current date in the TextView
    updateDisplay();
  }

  // update the date in the TextView
  private void updateDisplay() {
    mDateDisplay.setText(new StringBuilder()
             .append(mMonth + 1).append("-")
             .append(mDay).append("-")
             .append(mYear).append(" "));
  }

  // define a variable mDataSetListener
  private DatePickerDialog.OnDateSetListener mDateSetListener =
    new DatePickerDialog.OnDateSetListener() {
      public void onDateSet(DatePicker view, int year,
                            int monthOfYear, int dayOfMonth) {
        mYear = year;
        mMonth = monthOfYear;
        mDay = dayOfMonth;
        updateDisplay();
     }
   };
}