CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Is there any way, without huge code changes, to replace the "Datepicker" widget to a Text Entry field?

Problem statement:
Our organization has to go through a massive data clean up effort because of legacy data issues. A large number of the problems are date related. It is taking the temp folks hired to this a significant amount of time to pick the date for each instance of a date being wrong. (Obviously: Significant because they have to make MANY date corrections - not that each date correction is taking a significant amount of time...)

Ideal solution:
A Global configuration setting which tells CiviCRM: Use text fields for all Date fields, rely on back end validation.

Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks.

I'd like to add this as a feature request and offer to code it, as the date picker is hanging us up, too.

My first thought is to look at the UI for defining custom data fields... when you select certain types of field, you are next presented with a choice of what sort of widget is used for UI:  radio button, select, etc.   You could do the same thing for date fields: ask whether they are to be entered / displayed via a date picker or via text input.

• Does the question of UI logically belong with the field definition, or with the profile definition?
• Is there a logically consistent way to do this for built-in fields as well as custom fields?

IMHO: The UI Style decision belongs with the field definition.

As to second question: I may be limiting the discussion a bit, because I'm only thinking of Dates at this point, but it seems that the UI Style should be set regardless of whether it's a custom of built in field.

I'm not a PHP developer, but it seems to me that the Date fields are handled relatively centrally, regardless of whether it's a custom field or a built in field and so the UI decision could be handled the same way for both.