Android Date Picker Dialog

While looking for the best way to implement an input widget to retrieve the users’s Date of Birth I came across this input field while editing a contacts information in the generic People List that comes with the Android OS:

When pressed this opens the DatePickerDialog as shown below:

The Android SDK provides a DatePickerDialog which (as its name suggests) can be used to choose dates in a dialog popup and seems to be what is used when editing contact information as shown above. While Googling I found implementations using text or edit views with buttons to show the DatePickerDialog but none that had the triangle in the bottom right corner (for ICS) indicating the user should press to edit the value. That was until I ran into this StackOverflow post.

I created the following Custom View:

package com.tallan.android.customviews;

import java.util.Calendar;

import android.app.DatePickerDialog;
import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.DatePicker;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class DateDisplayPicker extends TextView implements DatePickerDialog.OnDateSetListener{

	private Context _context;

	public DateDisplayPicker(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
		super(context, attrs, defStyle);
		_context = context;
	}

	public DateDisplayPicker(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
		super(context, attrs);
		_context = context;
		setAttributes();
	}

	public DateDisplayPicker(Context context) {
		super(context);
		_context = context;
		setAttributes();
	}

	private void setAttributes() {
		setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
			@Override
			public void onClick(View v) {
				showDateDialog();
			}
		});
	}

	private void showDateDialog() {
		final Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
		DatePickerDialog dp = new DatePickerDialog(_context, this, c.get(Calendar.YEAR), c.get(Calendar.MONTH), c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
		dp.show();
	}

	@Override
	public void onDateSet(DatePicker view, int year, int monthOfYear,
			int dayOfMonth) {
		setText(String.format("%s/%s/%s", monthOfYear, dayOfMonth, year));
	}
}

Which can be used in a layout the same as a TextView as follows:

        <com.tallan.android.customviews.DateDisplayPicker
            android:id="@+id/clientEditCreate_BirthDateDayPicker"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            style="@android:style/Widget.Holo.Spinner"
            android:hint="Date"/>

The important part above is setting the style to “@android:style/Widget.Holo.Spinner” which makes it look like a spinner widget. Using it this way will provide the same look and feel as the contact edit info screen.

Thanks,
Nick