Hello Chrysostomos,

After extensive discussions on the topic, we have opened 2 new feature requests - A way to customize the mask of the date pickers (or remove it altogether) and a way to select which event will trigger the validation. I have added your Vote for both those features and I would encourage you to click the Follow button to receive email notifications on status updates.

These improvements will be a high priority for our R1 2023 release. To denote that change, and our intentions to work on improving the date pickers. I have marked this feature request as "Duplicate" to the one for the mask. 

Regards,
Svetoslav Dimitrov
Progress Telerik

Hello web,

The short answer is yes, we always make research when implementing a new component or a feature, to further expand:

We decided to implement a component that to the full extent uses the strengths of Blazor and the advantages that come from being a .NET-based framework. That is why we decided to use a DateTime behind the scenes and not a string.

In computer science, there is always more than one way to achieve something. By taking a decision there is always a trade-off. In your previous posts, you have made a comparison between our approach and the approaches of other DatePickers. Each approach has its use-cases, advantages, and disadvantages. 

Telerik component

We took a more protective approach when implementing the DatePicker to ensure the purity of the dates it returns. If we decided to go for a more frivolous approach and allow free text a lot of questions would have been raised:

• What date must the component return if the user types plain text?
• What happens if the date segment is invalid?
• What happens if the month segment is invalid?
• What happens if the separator is an "x" (30x04x2022)?
• Must the component try and parse dates written in words (eleventh of may two thousand and twenty-two)? If yes, what happens if it is written in other languages, or if there is a typo? Or if the year is written as twenty twenty-two? Or the client wants to take the American date format May of eleventh twenty twenty-two?
  • There is a plateful of scenarios here that must be considered and their answers are not trivial.

   

Based on the questions above, we decided to stick with the approach we have taken and improve it over time.

If you are using the Telerik UI for Blazor DatePicker you can rely on a component that will return a valid date without any further work for the backend.

Other DatePickers

The other date pickers took a more frivolous approach to allow plain text and invalid dates and trying to parse them to a valid date. I would refrain from an opinion if that is more or less intuitive.

The same question can be extended to a computer science level - is C# of JavaScript better? Not an easy question to answer for sure as both languages have their strengths over the other and it is up to personal preferences to use one or the other.

On the UX part of your question, as part of the R1 2023, the component will be reviewed by the UX design team, and some improvements will be added to the component. There will be a list of UX improvements including editing of years. However, changes in the data binding mechanism are not exactly UX changes

Regards,
Svetoslav Dimitrov
Progress Telerik

Hello,

I have discussed this matter with the Product Manager of Telerik UI for Blazor as part of our R1 2023 and we plan to provide improvements to the date pickers to improve their functionality, the paste dates feature request will be a high priority for those improvements. Another improvement will be the revision of how years are edited by using the keyboard as I can agree it is not really intuitive. 

Regards,
Svetoslav Dimitrov
Progress Telerik

Hello,

First of all, I would like to sum up the requests you have made:

• The ability to copy and paste dates
• Clear date segments
• Free-text input
• Allow different separators like dots
• Bind the DatePicker to string behind the scenes

The ability to copy and paste dates

We have an open feature request for pasting dates with the same format in the date pickers for Telerik UI for Blazor. Once this feature is implemented the users will be able to paste dates in the same format.

Clear date segments

Clearing a specific segment of the date is available when the component is bound to a non-nullable DateTime object. When binding the DatePicker to DateTime? and clearing a date segment, the object becomes null, thus the whole input is deleted. This is the expected behavior when working with nullable objects.

Free-text input and binding the DatePicker to a string behind the scenes

In order to achieve free-text input, the component's data binding mechanism must be changed. Currently, the data binding works on every keystroke in the input (ValueChanged), but the free-text input will require changing that event to OnChange. The reason behind that is that if the user types a temporary invalid date the argument in the ValueChanged event handler will be invalid. 

In the ValueChanged event handler:

1. The starting date is 30/04/2022. 
2. The user types 3, the argument in the handler will be 3/04/2022
3. The user types 1, the argument in the handler will be 31/04/2022. This is an invalid date and if other features across the application rely on that date they will fail.

Free-text input will bring a major heuristic task - if the user types an invalid month to what date shall we default - the last valid date or the DateTime.Today as DevExpress did?

Binding the DatePicker to a string behind the scenes will take away the nativeness of the component. The Blazor framework gives us the ability to use the corresponding strongly-typed data types. If we decide to bind the DatePicker to a string, the same can be applied to a Numeric textbox. Taking a loosely-type approach for our components is something that takes away the benefits from Blazor (that it uses C# and not JavaScript).

Allow different separators like dots

This behavior is available through globalization. Based on the culture of the application the DatePicker takes the specific separator. The Globalization demo for the DatePicker showcases that concept:

1. Select the "Bulgarian" option from the "SELECT YOUR LANGUAGE" DropDownList
2. The DatePicker will render a date with the format day.month.year
3. You can use the dot separator to switch the focus between the date segments

What you requested is switching the data binding mechanism from ValueChanged to OnChange. This will be a major breaking change and the current behavior of the DatePicker will no longer be available. Developing a second DatePicker that essentially duplicates the behavior of our JavaScript components will go as close to wrapping a JavaScript component as possible.

As part of our R1 2023, we plan to provide improvements to the date pickers to improve their functionality, the paste dates feature request will be a high priority for those improvements. Another improvement will be the revision of how years are edited by using the keyboard as I can agree it is not really intuitive. 

Having said that, I will "Decline" this feature request as changing the data binding mechanism (or developing /wrapping/ a JavaScript-like component) are not options we are willing to take.

Regards,
Svetoslav Dimitrov
Progress Telerik