Couple of asp:calendar questions...

[Homer J. Simpson]

I'm porting a classic ASP page with a calendar to ASP.NET. I appreciate the
fact that ASP.NET has such a control built-in, but I'm finding it's far less
flexible than I thought it would have. I'm sure I must simply have missed a
few things, so here's a couple of questions:

a) How can I customize the month name? There's a couple of options, eg,
month vs month + year, but I'd prefer to have something like "Aug" instead
of "August"--the amount of space I have horizontally is very limited, and
"s-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r" is causing my whole calendar to expand wider than I'd
like.

b) Similarly, I want to capitalize the month name (eg, "AUG"). I set
TitleStyle-CssClass to one of my classes, which includes "text-transform:
capitalize", but it doesn't seem to have any effect on IE6. Or is that
supposed to only capitalize the first character? I could've sworn I've used
this in the past to capitalize whole strings...

c) Is the VisibleDate property actually ever useful to *retrieve* the
currently shown month? The docs claim it can be used both to set and get
the current month, but so far, everywhere I've tried to use it, it's still
uninitialized (1/1/0001).

d) I'm trying to replace the Prev/Next month navigation controls with
images. Is this not supported? I've had to revert to setting the
ShowNextPrevMonth attribute to false and putting my own image buttons on top
with absolute positioning--yuck.

e) If you're gonna implement your own month navigation buttons and the
VisibleDate property is always 1/1/0001, how do you intelligently keep track
of where you are (since apparently the control can't tell you)? I'm
currently relying on a session variable in which I store a DateTime. If the
variable doesn't yet exist, I set it to DateTime.Now. Otherwise I adjust
the month in my button callback (....AddMonths(1) / ...AddMonths(-1)) and
save the updated value back in the session variable. Interesting
side-effect to this approach--if I click the refresh button, the last action
is repeated, so if I press Next and then hit refresh repeatedly, the month
moves forward every time.

f) How can I hook up a mouse click event on the title itself (the month)?
I'd like to use that to return to "today's month" without using additional
screen real-estate for another button.

g) I don't want the "other month"'s days to show (eg, the first week of
August shows 29/30/31/1/2/3/4; I'd rather have
[blank]/[blank]/[blank]1/2/3/4. Similarly, 6 weeks are always shown--and in
this particular case, the entire last week is for next month (Sep 2-8). I
can understand that having a fixed number of weeks ensures the amount of
vertical space doesn't change when navigating from month to month, but
ultimately the developer should be able to decide the sort of behavior he
wants. Is this another attribute I've missed?



I could work around a couple of these items by looking at the HTML generated
and hunting for the tags rendered, but I'd *really* not have to revert to
these sort of hacks.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Nobody, huh?

Ok, I realize I'm an ASP.NET n00b, and a lot of people don't bother with
entry-level questions. I'm fine with that; been there, done that, and I'm
guilty of this myself.

So where (newsgroup, web-based forum, etc) are my type of n00b questions
welcomed?

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

a) How can I customize the month name? There's a couple of options, eg,
month vs month + year, but I'd prefer to have something like "Aug" instead
of "August"--the amount of space I have horizontally is very limited, and
"s-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r" is causing my whole calendar to expand wider than I'd
like.

MyCalendar.Caption = MyCalendar.VisibleDate.ToString("MMM");

b) Similarly, I want to capitalize the month name (eg, "AUG"). I set
TitleStyle-CssClass to one of my classes, which includes "text-transform:
capitalize", but it doesn't seem to have any effect on IE6. Or is that
supposed to only capitalize the first character? I could've sworn I've
used this in the past to capitalize whole strings...

MyCalendar.Caption = MyCalendar.VisibleDate.ToString("MMM").ToUpper();

c) Is the VisibleDate property actually ever useful to *retrieve* the
currently shown month? The docs claim it can be used both to set and get
the current month, but so far, everywhere I've tried to use it, it's still
uninitialized (1/1/0001).

How are you setting it?

MyCalendar.VisibleDate = DateTime.Now;

d) I'm trying to replace the Prev/Next month navigation controls with
images. Is this not supported?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/li...ebcontrols.calendar.prevmonthtext(vs.80).aspx

e) If you're gonna implement your own month navigation buttons and the
VisibleDate property is always 1/1/0001, how do you intelligently keep
track of where you are (since apparently the control can't tell you)?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean... When you click on one of the
days, the date value is stored in the controls SelectedDate property...

f) How can I hook up a mouse click event on the title itself (the month)?
I'd like to use that to return to "today's month" without using additional
screen real-estate for another button.

That's a good one - not sure if there's a property for that...

g) I don't want the "other month"'s days to show (eg, the first week of
August shows 29/30/31/1/2/3/4; I'd rather have
[blank]/[blank]/[blank]1/2/3/4.

protected void MyCalendar_DayRender(object source, DayRenderEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Day.IsOtherMonth)
{
e.Cell.Controls.Clear();
e.Cell.Text = " ";
}
}

Similarly, 6 weeks are always shown--and in this particular case, the
entire last week is for next month (Sep 2-8). I can understand that
having a fixed number of weeks ensures the amount of vertical space
doesn't change when navigating from month to month, but ultimately the
developer should be able to decide the sort of behavior he wants. Is this
another attribute I've missed?

Not sure - sorry...

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

a) How can I customize the month name? There's a couple of options, eg,

MyCalendar.Caption = MyCalendar.VisibleDate.ToString("MMM");

Using the caption in place of the month. Ok, that's an interesting
approach.

However, the month string that shows up when ShowTitle is set to true is now
made redundant. No problem--set it to false, and let Caption take its
place...only, when ShowTitle is false, the Prev/Next buttons go away (even
if you force ShowNextPrevMonth to true). I'd like to keep them.

MyCalendar.Caption = MyCalendar.VisibleDate.ToString("MMM").ToUpper();

Same as above. If I can't use the caption, I still don't have an easy way
to customize the text.

How are you setting it?

MyCalendar.VisibleDate = DateTime.Now;

I'm trying to *retrieve* it, not set it...as in,

DateTime dtCurrentlyShowing = MyCalendar.VisibleDate; // <-- always
1/1/0001

Actually, this goes hand-in-hand with your first response. You suggested:

MyCalendar.Caption = MyCalendar.VisibleDate.ToString("MMM");

....however, the caption shows Jan, not Aug. Stepping through the code, you
can see that MyCalendar.VisibleDate is set to 1/1/0001. Was this off the
top of your head (I wouldn't blame you), or is it actually working on your
end??

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/li...ebcontrols.calendar.prevmonthtext(vs.80).aspx

Oh, duh. And I see the generated HTML is surrounded by an <a> tag, so
you don't even have to worry about providing your own onclick event. Nice.

(As an aside, of course when an image is contained within an archor tag, it
automatically gets borders, so I had to override that...but that's no
biggie).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean... When you click on one of the
days, the date value is stored in the controls SelectedDate property...

That's the thing, I'm not clicking on a day (thus I can't use SelectedDate).
I'm trying to figure out the current month, so I can use that to calculate
the previous/next months for my own month navigation buttons.

However this is now a moot point, as I've now replaced the
Prev/NextMonthText values for my own image tags and don't have to implement
the actual navigation myself.

OTOH, my question still stands--what if I needed to know the month currently
shown by the calendar at some other random point in the code--eg, *not* in
response to a date selection event? Reading VisibleDate still only shows
1/1/0001...

That's a good one - not sure if there's a property for that...

The encapsulating <td> rendered doesn't even have an ID, so I don't know if
you could get to it other than taking a peek at the calendar's control
collection and guessing (which would be rather ugly and could easily break).

g) I don't want the "other month"'s days to show (eg, the first week of
August shows 29/30/31/1/2/3/4; I'd rather have
[blank]/[blank]/[blank]1/2/3/4.

protected void MyCalendar_DayRender(object source, DayRenderEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Day.IsOtherMonth)
{
e.Cell.Controls.Clear();
e.Cell.Text = "&nbsp;";
}
}

That looked promising, until I got to the next part (see below)

Not sure - sorry...

....the DayRender() override clears the cells, however I've ended up (for
this particular month) with a completely empty row at the bottom. It would
make sense to get rid of that last row entirely...again, hunting for the raw
tags to manipulate them, instead of using some encapsulating objects, is far
from ideal...

OTOH, if I leave out e.Cell.Text = "&nbsp;", the last row doesn't use up any
space on the screen...even though it still exists as HTML. Actually, upon
closer examination, the background color still shows (as a one-pixel row),
so it would be better to get rid of the last row entirely...

Well, it's still definitely progress. Thanks for following up. I thought
that given the volume in this newsgroup, if I still had no response after 5
days, my post was going to go unanswered. I hate to repeat posts in a
newsgroup.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

I'm trying to *retrieve* it, not set it...as in,

DateTime dtCurrentlyShowing = MyCalendar.VisibleDate; // <-- always
1/1/0001

Yes, but the VisibleDate property doesn't get set automatically... As it's a
standard DateTime variable, it will initialise itself to 1/1/0001 until you
tell it otherwise...

When a Calendar control is first initialised, its TodaysDate property is set
to the curent date, but not the VisibleDate property...

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

How are you setting it?

Yes, but the VisibleDate property doesn't get set automatically... As it's
a standard DateTime variable, it will initialise itself to 1/1/0001 until
you tell it otherwise...

When a Calendar control is first initialised, its TodaysDate property is
set to the curent date, but not the VisibleDate property...

Ok...so the docs are really misleading then. Here's a quote from my help
file (from
ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.NETDEVFX.v20.en/cpref27/html/P_System_Web_UI_MobileControls_Calendar_VisibleDate.htm)

"Gets or sets a date that specifies the month to display."

My interpretation is that you "should" be able to use it to have the control
tell you what month is currently being shown. If that's not the case, then
I have no idea how you should be able to determine that from any random
place in your code.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Ok...so the docs are really misleading then. Here's a quote from my help
file (from
ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.NETDEVFX.v20.en/cpref27/html/P_System_Web_UI_MobileControls_Calendar_VisibleDate.htm)

"Gets or sets a date that specifies the month to display."

My interpretation is that you "should" be able to use it to have the
control tell you what month is currently being shown.

Yes you can - you just have to initialise it first - loads of properties /
variables are like that...

DateTime dtmNow; // default value i.e.
1/1/0001
DateTime dtmNow = DateTime.Now; // current date & time

If that's not the case, then I have no idea how you should be able to
determine that from any random place in your code.

Initialise it when the page loads, then you won't need to worry...

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Yes you can - you just have to initialise it first - loads of properties /

variables are like that...

DateTime dtmNow; // default value i.e.
1/1/0001
DateTime dtmNow = DateTime.Now; // current date & time


Initialise it when the page loads, then you won't need to worry...

That's the thing that gets me. You can put a calendar control on a page and
it'll automatically show the current month ("current", based on the system
time). The user can navigate to other months at will, all without me *ever*
assigning some initial value--all seemingly to be perfectly valid. Then if
I later need to figure out what month is currently shown by the control, I
have no way of determining that--because I never had to initialize
VisibleDate to begin with, though it remained fully functional all that
time.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a quirky design if the control is fully
functional, but you *still* have to initalize that particular variable
anyway. Or the docs should be amended with big bold red letters. I could
understand if the control didn't work at all until you initialized it, but
that's not the case...

Hell of a gotcha if you ask me. Apparently I'm the only one thinking that.
)

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

You can put a calendar control on a page and it'll automatically show the
current month ("current", based on the system time).

That's right - the TodaysDate property is initialised to the current date
time by default...

The user can navigate to other months at will, all without me *ever*
assigning some initial value--all seemingly to be perfectly valid.
Correct.

Then if I later need to figure out what month is currently shown by the
control, I have no way of determining that--because I never had to
initialize VisibleDate to begin with, though it remained fully functional
all that time.

That's right - the TodaysDate variable is initialised when the control is
created, but the VisibleDate isn't...

Apparently I'm the only one thinking that. > )

Apparently so...