Hi all,
Following a request from one of our customers (who was complaining about
the date-find field), I recently implemented a new kind of form field
that uses the Date Range Picker jQuery plugin
(https://www.daterangepicker.com, I'll use "DRP" from now on). This
plugin provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to picking a date
(with or without time), or a date range. It provides a very standard UI
to do so, with a lots of options (https://www.daterangepicker.com/#options).
I chose this plugin because it's a jQuery plugin, with a lot of options
that allows to replace both <date-find/> and <date-time/>, and replace
jQuery UI date picker (https://jqueryui.com/datepicker/) which is far
more less flexible. This plugin is quite old and is not maintained
anymore (last commit 4 years ago), but it does the job, and is widely
used (so lots of support and resources).
I also considered https://air-datepicker.com/, which is still an active
project, is written in pure JavaScript, and does not depend on MomentJS
like DRP (which is a problem, see
https://momentjs.com/docs/#/-project-status/). In fact it does not
depend on anything which is great (and pretty rare in the JS
ecosystem...). In fact, as I write, I'm thinking of giving it a shot :).
Anyway.
At first I tried to modify the date-find field, in such a way that it
could support the classic UI, or the DRP UI (basically, something that
would look like <date-find input-method="classic|dateRangePicker">).
After all, why would I introduce another date picker field in OFBiz ?
After a few hours messing around with macros and the Java form builder,
it appeared that it would add a lot of complexity to build a single
field capable of displaying the standard date picker or the new one
(supporting all of the features that DRP offers). I also thought that,
for our use case, it could be pretty handy to keep the standard date
picker as it is. Also, DRP has at least one limitation compared to the
standard : OOTB you cannot search entities where a date field is empty
(but it could be implemented on top of it).
So I finally chose to write a new field, <date-range-picker/>, which
supports almost all the options that DRP offers (as field's attributes).
It is really a wrapper around DRP, more than a generic date picker
field. It can be used to pick only one date (like <date-time/>), or a
range (like <date-find/>, you can choose to pick time or not, and many
other things showcased here : https://www.daterangepicker.com/#examples.
In our use case, we plan to use it on a few critical forms (the ones
that our client complained about), and keep the <date-find/> everywhere
else. If everything goes fine, we will eventually extend its usage.
So my question would be : do you feel that a new date/date-range picker
field, with a more fancy UI, would be an interesting addition to the
common theme in OFBiz ? Would you have any suggestion about that ? If we
go forward, do you have an opinion about wether I should choose DRP or
Air Picker (the method would be the same : implement every option that
the plugin offers as OFBiz field attributes) ?
Thanks for your time!
Florian
--
Néréide <http://nereide.fr/>
Florian Motteau
Co-entrepreneur Néréide
informat...@nereide.fr
8 rue des Déportés 37000 TOURS
Std: 02 47 50 30 54
www.nereide.fr <https://nereide.fr/>
Réseau Libre-Entreprise <https://www.libre-entreprise.org/>
