Android Calendar View for Date Picker

Question

I'm writing my first app, and I have a question about DatePicker.

My app requires the user to input a date. The most user-friendly way would be to popup a calendar-like widget that displays the current month like a calendar grid - something like this:

I want to use that in place of the DatePicker interface - which has Month, Day, and Year fields, each with an up and down button to increment/decrement.

Is this type of functionality built into any Android widget or view, or would I have to design my own custom component to do this? I figured this would already exist, seeing how much this type of UI is used so frequently in non-mobile apps and web pages.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Now, in 2014, even the native DatePicker (link) contains small Holo looking CalendarView (link) to pick a day in month.

You can choose, if both spinners and CalendarView or just one of them is displayed by setting:

• android:calendarViewShown
• android:spinnersShown

I'm not sure if it's just API level 16+ or if it was even in Ice Cream Sandwich, but it's there. This is how it looks by default:

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Moreover, on API level 21 and higher there is a new Material themed DatePicker that looks like following:

This is default on API 21+ and there are no spinners anymore, but you can switch back to the Holo one by setting

android:datePickerMode="spinner" 

in your XML.