ion-datetime
Datetimes present a calendar interface and time wheel, making it easy for users to select dates and times. Datetimes are similar to the native input
elements of datetime-local
, however, Ionic Framework's Datetime component makes it easy to display the date and time in the preferred format, and manage the datetime values.
Overview
Historically, handling datetime values within JavaScript, or even within HTML
inputs, has always been a challenge. Specifically, JavaScript's Date
object is
notoriously difficult to correctly parse apart datetime strings or to format
datetime values. Even worse is how different browsers and JavaScript versions
parse various datetime strings differently, especially per locale.
Fortunately, Ionic Framework's datetime input has been designed so developers can avoid the common pitfalls, allowing developers to easily manipulate datetime values and give the user a simple datetime picker for a great user experience.
ISO 8601 Datetime Format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mmZ
Ionic Framework uses the ISO 8601 datetime format
for its value. The value is simply a string, rather than using JavaScript's
Date
object. Using the ISO datetime format makes it easy to serialize
and parse within JSON objects and databases.
Below are some examples of ISO 8601 formats that can be used with ion-datetime
:
Description | Format | Datetime Value Example |
---|---|---|
Year | YYYY | 1994 |
Year and Month | YYYY-MM | 1994-12 |
Complete Date | YYYY-MM-DD | 1994-12-15 |
Date and Time | YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm | 1994-12-15T13:47 |
UTC Timezone | YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ | 1994-12-15T13:47:20Z |
Timezone Offset | YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssTZD | 1994-12-15T13:47:20+05:00 |
Hour and Minute | HH:mm | 13:47 |
Note that the year is always four-digits, milliseconds (if it's added) is always
three-digits, and all others are always two-digits. So the number representing
January always has a leading zero, such as 01
. Additionally, the hour is
always in the 24-hour format, so 00
is 12am
on a 12-hour clock, 13
means
1pm
, and 23
means 11pm
.
While seconds, milliseconds, and time zone can be specified using the ISO 8601 datetime format, ion-datetime
does not provide an interface for second, millisecond, and time zone selection. Any second, millisecond, or time zone values provided will be ignored.
Basic Usage
Usage with Datetime Button
If you need to present a datetime in an overlay such as a modal or a popover, we recommend using ion-datetime-button. ion-datetime-button
should be used when space is constrained. This component displays buttons which show the current date and time values. When the buttons are tapped, the date or time pickers open in the overlay.
Setting Values Asynchronously
If its value
is updated programmatically after a datetime has already been created, the datetime will automatically jump to the new date. However, it is recommended to avoid updating the value
in this way when users are able to interact with the datetime, as this could be disorienting for those currently trying to select a date. For example, if a datetime's value
is loaded by an asynchronous process, it is recommended to hide the datetime with CSS until the value has finished updating.
Date Constraints
Max and Min Dates
To customize the minimum and maximum datetime values, the min
and max
component properties can be provided which may make more sense for the app's use-case. Following the same IS0 8601 format listed in the table above, each component can restrict which dates can be selected by the user.
The following example restricts date selection to March 2022 through May 2022 only.
Selecting Specific Values
While the min
and max
properties allow you to restrict date selection to a certain range, the monthValues
, dayValues
, yearValues
, hourValues
, and minuteValues
properties allow you choose specific days and times that users can select.
The following example allows minutes to be selected in increments of 15. It also allows for days to be selected in increments of 5.
Advanced Date Constraints
With the isDateEnabled
property, developers can customize the ion-datetime
to disable a specific day, range of dates, weekends or any custom rule using an ISO 8601 date string.
The isDateEnabled
property accepts a function returning a boolean, indicating if a date is enabled. The function is called for each rendered calendar day, for the previous, current and next month. Custom implementations should be optimized for performance to avoid jank.
The following example shows how to disable all weekend dates. For more advanced date manipulation, we recommend using a date utility such as date-fns
.
Localization
Ionic Framework makes use of the Intl.DatetimeFormat Web API which allows us to automatically localize the month and day names according to the language and region set on the user's device.
Custom Locale
For instances where you need a specific locale, you can use the locale
property to set it. The locale controls both the language and the date and time formats that are displayed.
The following example shows how to set the locale to Spanish (Spain).
The time label is not automatically localized. See Time Label for more information.
Hour Cycle
ion-datetime
will use the hour cycle that is specified by the locale
property by default. For example, if locale
is set to en-US
, then ion-datetime
will use a 12 hour cycle.
There are 4 primary hour cycle types:
Hour cycle type | Description |
---|---|
'h12' | Hour system using 1–12; corresponds to 'h' in patterns. The 12 hour clock, with midnight starting at 12:00 am. |
'h23' | Hour system using 0–23; corresponds to 'H' in patterns. The 24 hour clock, with midnight starting at 0:00. |
'h11' | Hour system using 0–11; corresponds to 'K' in patterns. The 12 hour clock, with midnight starting at 0:00 am. |
'h24' | Hour system using 1–24; corresponds to 'k' in pattern. The 24 hour clock, with midnight starting at 24:00. |
There may be scenarios where you need to have more control over which hour cycle is used. This is where the hourCycle
property can help.
In the following example, we can use the hourCycle
property to force ion-datetime
to use the 12 hour cycle even though the locale is en-GB
, which uses a 24 hour cycle by default:
First Day of the Week
For ion-datetime
, the default first day of the week is Sunday. As of 2022, there is no browser API that lets Ionic automatically determine the first day of the week based on a device's locale, though there is on-going work regarding this (see: TC39 GitHub).
Time Label
The time label is not automatically localized. Fortunately, Ionic makes it easy to provide custom localizations with the time-label
slot.
Locale Extension Tags
ion-datetime
also supports locale extension tags as part of the Intl.Locale
API. These tags let you encode information about the locale in the locale string itself. Developers may prefer to use the extension tag approach if they are using the Intl.Locale API in their apps.
For example, if you wanted to use a 12 hour cycle with the en-GB
locale, you could provide extension tags instead of using both the locale
and hourCycle
properties:
Be sure to check the Browser Compatibility Chart for Intl.Locale
before using it in your app.
Presentation
By default, ion-datetime
allows users to select both date and time. In addition, users have access to selecting the specific month, year, hour, and minute.
Some use cases may call for only date selection or only time selection. The presentation
property allows you to specify which pickers to show and the order to show them in. For example, setting date-time
will have the calendar picker appear before the time picker. Setting time-date
will have the calendar picker appear after the time picker.
Month and Year Selection
Month and year selection is available by passing month-year
, year-month
, month
, or year
to the presentation
property.
This example shows a datetime with the month-year
configuration.
Time Selection
Time selection is available by passing date-time
, time-date
, or time
to the presentation
property.
This example shows a datetime with the time
configuration.
Date Selection
Date selection is available by passing date-time
, time-date
, or date
to the presentation
property.
This example shows a datetime with the date
configuration.
Wheel Style Pickers
By default, Ionic will prefer to show a grid style layout when using presentation
. However, it is possible to show a wheel style using the preferWheel
property. When preferWheel
is true
, Ionic will prefer to show the wheel style layout when possible.
Certain presentation
options have both grid and wheel styles that developers can choose from with the preferWheel
property. Other presentation
values only have a wheel style and will never show a grid style. The table below shows which presentation
values have grid or wheel styles.
presentation | Has Grid Style? | Has Wheel Style? |
---|---|---|
date | Yes | Yes |
date-time | Yes | Yes |
month | No | Yes |
month-year | No | Yes |
time | No | Yes |
time-date | Yes | Yes |
year | No | Yes |
The example below shows the wheel picker with presentation="date-time"
.
Multiple Date Selection
If the multiple
property is set to true
, multiple dates can be selected from the calendar picker. Clicking a selected date will deselect it.
This property is only supported when using presentation="date"
and preferWheel="false"
.
Titles
By default, ion-datetime
does not show any header or title associated with the component. Developers can use the showDefaultTitle
property to show the default title/header configuration. They can also use the title
slot to customize what is rendered in the header.
Showing the Default Title
Customizing the Title
Buttons
By default, ionChange
is emitted with the new datetime value whenever a new date is selected. To require user confirmation before emitting ionChange
, you can either set the showDefaultButtons
property to true
or use the buttons
slot to pass in a custom confirmation button. When passing in custom buttons, the confirm button must call the confirm
method on ion-datetime
for ionChange
to be emitted.
Showing Confirmation Buttons
The default Done and Cancel buttons are already preconfigured to call the confirm
and cancel
methods, respectively.
Customizing Button Texts
For simple use cases, developers can provide custom button text to the confirmation and cancel values through the doneText
and cancelText
properties. We recommend doing this when you only need to change the button text and do not need any custom behavior.
Customizing Button Elements
Developers can provide their own buttons for advanced custom behavior.
ion-datetime
has confirm
, cancel
, and reset
methods that developers can call when clicking on custom buttons. The reset
method also allows developers to provide a date to reset the datetime to.
Highlighting Specific Dates
Using the highlightedDates
property, developers can style particular dates with custom text or background colors. This property can be defined as either an array of dates and their colors, or a callback that receives an ISO string and returns the colors to use.
When specifying colors, any valid CSS color format can be used. This includes hex codes, rgba, color variables, etc.
To maintain a consistent user experience, the style of selected date(s) will always override custom highlights.
This property is only supported when preferWheel="false"
, and using a presentation
of either "date"
, "date-time"
, or "time-date"
.
Using Array
An array is better when the highlights apply to fixed dates, such as due dates.
Using Callback
A callback is better when the highlighted dates are recurring, such as birthdays or recurring meetings.
Styling
Global Theming
Ionic's powerful theming system can be used to easily change your entire app to match a certain theme. In this example, we used the Color Creator and the Stepped Color Generator to create a rose color palette that we can use for ion-datetime
.
The benefit of this approach is that every component, not just ion-datetime
, can automatically take advantage of this theme.
Calendar Days
The calendar days in a grid-style ion-datetime
can be styled using CSS shadow parts.
The example below selects the day 2 days ago, unless that day is in the previous month, then it selects a day 2 days in the future. This is done for demo purposes in order to show how to apply custom styling to all days, the current day, and the selected day.
Wheel Pickers
The wheels used in ion-datetime
can be styled through a combination of shadow parts and CSS variables. This applies to both the columns in wheel-style datetimes, and the month/year picker in grid-style datetimes.
Time Zones
Ionic's ion-datetime
follows the datetime-local behavior of not manipulating or setting the time zone inside of a datetime control. In other words, a time value of "07:00" will not be adjusted according to different time zones.
We recommend using a library such as date-fns-tz to convert a datetime value to the desired time zone.
Below is an example of formatting an ISO-8601 string to display in the time zone set on a user's device:
import { format, utcToZonedTime } from 'date-fns-tz';
// Get the time zone set on the user's device
const userTimeZone = Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone;
// Create a date object from a UTC date string
const date = new Date('2014-10-25T10:46:20Z');
// Use date-fns-tz to convert from UTC to a zoned time
const zonedTime = utcToZonedTime(date, userTimeZone);
// Create a formatted string from the zoned time
format(zonedTime, 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssXXX', { timeZone: userTimeZone });
Parsing Date Values
The ionChange
event will emit the date value as an ISO-8601 string in the event payload. It is the developer's responsibility to format it based on their application needs. We recommend using date-fns to format the date value.
Below is an example of formatting an ISO-8601 string to display the month, date and year:
import { format, parseISO } from 'date-fns';
/**
* This is provided in the event
* payload from the `ionChange` event.
*
* The value is an ISO-8601 date string.
*/
const dateFromIonDatetime = '2021-06-04T14:23:00-04:00';
const formattedString = format(parseISO(dateFromIonDatetime), 'MMM d, yyyy');
console.log(formattedString); // Jun 4, 2021
See https://date-fns.org/docs/format for a list of all the valid format tokens.
Advanced Datetime Validation and Manipulation
The datetime picker provides the simplicity of selecting an exact format, and
persists the datetime values as a string using the standardized ISO 8601
datetime format. However, it's important
to note that ion-datetime
does not attempt to solve all situations when
validating and manipulating datetime values. If datetime values need to be
parsed from a certain format, or manipulated (such as adding 5 days to a date,
subtracting 30 minutes, etc.), or even formatting data to a specific locale,
then we highly recommend using date-fns to work with
dates in JavaScript.
Accessibility
Keyboard Navigation
ion-datetime
has full keyboard support for navigating between focusable elements inside of the component. The following table details what each key does:
Key | Function |
---|---|
Tab | Moves focus to the next focusable element. |
Shift + Tab | Moves focus to the previous focusable element. |
Space or Enter | Clicks the focusable element. |
Date Grid
Key | Function |
---|---|
ArrowUp | Moves focus to the same day of the previous week. |
ArrowDown | Moves focus to the same day of the next week. |
ArrowRight | Moves focus to the next day. |
ArrowLeft | Moves focus to the previous day. |
Home | Moves focus to the first day of the current week. |
End | Moves focus to the last day of the current week. |
PageUp | Changes the grid of dates to the previous month. |
PageDown | Changes the grid of dates to the next month. |
Shift + PageUp | Changes the grid of dates to the previous year. |
Shift + PageDown | Changes the grid of dates to the next year. |
Time, Month, and Year Wheels
When using the time wheel picker, you can use the number keys to select hour and minute values when the columns are focused.
Key | Function |
---|---|
ArrowUp | Scroll to the previous item. |
ArrowDown | Scroll to the next item. |
Home | Scroll to the first item. |
End | Scroll to the last item. |
Interfaces
DatetimeChangeEventDetail
interface DatetimeChangeEventDetail {
value?: string | null;
}
DatetimeCustomEvent
While not required, this interface can be used in place of the CustomEvent
interface for stronger typing with Ionic events emitted from this component.
interface DatetimeCustomEvent extends CustomEvent {
detail: DatetimeChangeEventDetail;
target: HTMLIonDatetimeElement;
}
Properties
cancelText
Description | The text to display on the picker's cancel button. |
Attribute | cancel-text |
Type | string |
Default | 'Cancel' |
clearText
Description | The text to display on the picker's "Clear" button. |
Attribute | clear-text |
Type | string |
Default | 'Clear' |
color
Description | The color to use from your application's color palette. Default options are: "primary" , "secondary" , "tertiary" , "success" , "warning" , "danger" , "light" , "medium" , and "dark" . For more information on colors, see theming. |
Attribute | color |
Type | "danger" | "dark" | "light" | "medium" | "primary" | "secondary" | "success" | "tertiary" | "warning" | string | undefined |
Default | 'primary' |
dayValues
Description | Values used to create the list of selectable days. By default every day is shown for the given month. However, to control exactly which days of the month to display, the dayValues input can take a number, an array of numbers, or a string of comma separated numbers. Note that even if the array days have an invalid number for the selected month, like 31 in February, it will correctly not show days which are not valid for the selected month. |
Attribute | day-values |
Type | number | number[] | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
disabled
Description | If true , the user cannot interact with the datetime. |
Attribute | disabled |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
doneText
Description | The text to display on the picker's "Done" button. |
Attribute | done-text |
Type | string |
Default | 'Done' |
firstDayOfWeek
Description | The first day of the week to use for ion-datetime . The default value is 0 and represents Sunday. |
Attribute | first-day-of-week |
Type | number |
Default | 0 |
highlightedDates
Description | Used to apply custom text and background colors to specific dates. Can be either an array of objects containing ISO strings and colors, or a callback that receives an ISO string and returns the colors. Only applies to the date , date-time , and time-date presentations, with preferWheel="false" . |
Attribute | undefined |
Type | ((dateIsoString: string) => DatetimeHighlightStyle | undefined) | DatetimeHighlight[] | undefined |
Default | undefined |
hourCycle
Description | The hour cycle of the ion-datetime . If no value is set, this is specified by the current locale. |
Attribute | hour-cycle |
Type | "h12" | "h23" | undefined |
Default | undefined |
hourValues
Description | Values used to create the list of selectable hours. By default the hour values range from 0 to 23 for 24-hour, or 1 to 12 for 12-hour. However, to control exactly which hours to display, the hourValues input can take a number, an array of numbers, or a string of comma separated numbers. |
Attribute | hour-values |
Type | number | number[] | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
isDateEnabled
Description | Returns if an individual date (calendar day) is enabled or disabled. If true , the day will be enabled/interactive. If false , the day will be disabled/non-interactive.The function accepts an ISO 8601 date string of a given day. By default, all days are enabled. Developers can use this function to write custom logic to disable certain days. The function is called for each rendered calendar day, for the previous, current and next month. Custom implementations should be optimized for performance to avoid jank. |
Attribute | undefined |
Type | ((dateIsoString: string) => boolean) | undefined |
Default | undefined |
locale
Description | The locale to use for ion-datetime . This impacts month and day name formatting. The "default" value refers to the default locale set by your device. |
Attribute | locale |
Type | string |
Default | 'default' |
max
Description | The maximum datetime allowed. Value must be a date string following the ISO 8601 datetime format standard, 1996-12-19 . The format does not have to be specific to an exact datetime. For example, the maximum could just be the year, such as 1994 . Defaults to the end of this year. |
Attribute | max |
Type | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
min
Description | The minimum datetime allowed. Value must be a date string following the ISO 8601 datetime format standard, such as 1996-12-19 . The format does not have to be specific to an exact datetime. For example, the minimum could just be the year, such as 1994 . Defaults to the beginning of the year, 100 years ago from today. |
Attribute | min |
Type | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
minuteValues
Description | Values used to create the list of selectable minutes. By default the minutes range from 0 to 59 . However, to control exactly which minutes to display, the minuteValues input can take a number, an array of numbers, or a string of comma separated numbers. For example, if the minute selections should only be every 15 minutes, then this input value would be minuteValues="0,15,30,45" . |
Attribute | minute-values |
Type | number | number[] | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
mode
Description | The mode determines which platform styles to use. |
Attribute | mode |
Type | "ios" | "md" |
Default | undefined |
monthValues
Description | Values used to create the list of selectable months. By default the month values range from 1 to 12 . However, to control exactly which months to display, the monthValues input can take a number, an array of numbers, or a string of comma separated numbers. For example, if only summer months should be shown, then this input value would be monthValues="6,7,8" . Note that month numbers do not have a zero-based index, meaning January's value is 1 , and December's is 12 . |
Attribute | month-values |
Type | number | number[] | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
multiple
Description | If true , multiple dates can be selected at once. Only applies to presentation="date" and preferWheel="false" . |
Attribute | multiple |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
name
Description | The name of the control, which is submitted with the form data. |
Attribute | name |
Type | string |
Default | this.inputId |
preferWheel
Description | If true , a wheel picker will be rendered instead of a calendar grid where possible. If false , a calendar grid will be rendered instead of a wheel picker where possible.A wheel picker can be rendered instead of a grid when presentation is one of the following values: "date" , "date-time" , or "time-date" .A wheel picker will always be rendered regardless of the preferWheel value when presentation is one of the following values: "time" , "month" , "month-year" , or "year" . |
Attribute | prefer-wheel |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
presentation
Description | Which values you want to select. "date" will show a calendar picker to select the month, day, and year. "time" will show a time picker to select the hour, minute, and (optionally) AM/PM. "date-time" will show the date picker first and time picker second. "time-date" will show the time picker first and date picker second. |
Attribute | presentation |
Type | "date" | "date-time" | "month" | "month-year" | "time" | "time-date" | "year" |
Default | 'date-time' |
readonly
Description | If true , the datetime appears normal but is not interactive. |
Attribute | readonly |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
showClearButton
Description | If true , a "Clear" button will be rendered alongside the default "Cancel" and "OK" buttons at the bottom of the ion-datetime component. Developers can also use the button slot if they want to customize these buttons. If custom buttons are set in the button slot then the default buttons will not be rendered. |
Attribute | show-clear-button |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
showDefaultButtons
Description | If true , the default "Cancel" and "OK" buttons will be rendered at the bottom of the ion-datetime component. Developers can also use the button slot if they want to customize these buttons. If custom buttons are set in the button slot then the default buttons will not be rendered. |
Attribute | show-default-buttons |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
showDefaultTimeLabel
Description | If true , the default "Time" label will be rendered for the time selector of the ion-datetime component. Developers can also use the time-label slot if they want to customize this label. If a custom label is set in the time-label slot then the default label will not be rendered. |
Attribute | show-default-time-label |
Type | boolean |
Default | true |
showDefaultTitle
Description | If true , a header will be shown above the calendar picker. This will include both the slotted title, and the selected date. |
Attribute | show-default-title |
Type | boolean |
Default | false |
size
Description | If cover , the ion-datetime will expand to cover the full width of its container. If fixed , the ion-datetime will have a fixed width. |
Attribute | size |
Type | "cover" | "fixed" |
Default | 'fixed' |
titleSelectedDatesFormatter
Description | A callback used to format the header text that shows how many dates are selected. Only used if there are 0 or more than 1 selected (i.e. unused for exactly 1). By default, the header text is set to "numberOfDates days". |
Attribute | undefined |
Type | ((selectedDates: string[]) => string) | undefined |
Default | undefined |
value
Description | The value of the datetime as a valid ISO 8601 datetime string. This should be an array of strings only when multiple="true" . |
Attribute | value |
Type | null | string | string[] | undefined |
Default | undefined |
yearValues
Description | Values used to create the list of selectable years. By default the year values range between the min and max datetime inputs. However, to control exactly which years to display, the yearValues input can take a number, an array of numbers, or string of comma separated numbers. For example, to show upcoming and recent leap years, then this input's value would be yearValues="2008,2012,2016,2020,2024" . |
Attribute | year-values |
Type | number | number[] | string | undefined |
Default | undefined |
Events
Name | Description |
---|---|
ionBlur | Emitted when the datetime loses focus. |
ionCancel | Emitted when the datetime selection was cancelled. |
ionChange | Emitted when the value (selected date) has changed. |
ionFocus | Emitted when the datetime has focus. |
Methods
cancel
Description | Emits the ionCancel event and optionally closes the popover or modal that the datetime was presented in. |
Signature | cancel(closeOverlay?: boolean) => Promise<void> |
confirm
Description | Confirms the selected datetime value, updates the value property, and optionally closes the popover or modal that the datetime was presented in. |
Signature | confirm(closeOverlay?: boolean) => Promise<void> |
reset
Description | Resets the internal state of the datetime but does not update the value. Passing a valid ISO-8601 string will reset the state of the component to the provided date. If no value is provided, the internal state will be reset to the clamped value of the min, max and today. |
Signature | reset(startDate?: string) => Promise<void> |
CSS Shadow Parts
Name | Description |
---|---|
calendar-day | The individual buttons that display a day inside of the datetime calendar. |
calendar-day active | The currently selected calendar day. |
calendar-day disabled | The calendar day that is disabled. |
calendar-day today | The calendar day that contains the current day. |
month-year-button | The button that opens the month/year picker when using a grid style layout. |
time-button | The button that opens the time picker when using a grid style layout with presentation="date-time" or "time-date" . |
time-button active | The time picker button when the picker is open. |
wheel-item | The individual items when using a wheel style layout, or in the month/year picker when using a grid style layout. |
wheel-item active | The currently selected wheel-item. |
CSS Custom Properties
Name | Description |
---|---|
--background | The primary background of the datetime component. |
--background-rgb | The primary background of the datetime component in RGB format. |
--title-color | The text color of the title. |
--wheel-fade-background-rgb | The color of the gradient covering non-selected items when using a wheel style layout, or in the month/year picker for grid style layouts. Must be in RGB format, e.g. 255, 255, 255 . |
--wheel-highlight-background | The background of the highlight under the selected item when using a wheel style layout, or in the month/year picker for grid style layouts. |
Slots
Name | Description |
---|---|
buttons | The buttons in the datetime. |
time-label | The label for the time selector in the datetime. |
title | The title of the datetime. |