How to Use Date Picker with Django

In this tutorial we are going to explore three date/datetime pickers options that you can easily use in a Django project. We are going to explore how to do it manually first, then how to set up a custom widget and finally how to use a third-party Django app with support to datetime pickers.

Introduction

The implementation of a date picker is mostly done on the front-end.

The key part of the implementation is to assure Django will receive the date input value in the correct format, and also that Django will be able to reproduce the format when rendering a form with initial data.

We can also use custom widgets to provide a deeper integration between the front-end and back-end and also to promote better reuse throughout a project.

In the next sections we are going to explore following date pickers:

Tempus Dominus Bootstrap 4 Docs  Source 

Tempus Dominus Bootstrap 4

XDSoft DateTimePicker Docs  Source 

XDSoft DateTimePicker

Fengyuan Chen’s Datepicker Docs  Source 

Fengyuan Chen's Datepicker

Tempus Dominus Bootstrap 4

Docs  Source 

This is a great JavaScript library and it integrate well with Bootstrap 4. The downside is that it requires moment.js and sort of need Font-Awesome for the icons.

It only make sense to use this library with you are already using Bootstrap 4 + jQuery, otherwise the list of CSS and JS may look a little bit overwhelming.

To install it you can use their CDN or download the latest release from their GitHub Releases page.

If you downloaded the code from the releases page, grab the processed code from the build/ folder.

Below, a static HTML example of the datepicker:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
    <title>Static Example</title>

    <!-- Bootstrap 4 -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.2.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-GJzZqFGwb1QTTN6wy59ffF1BuGJpLSa9DkKMp0DgiMDm4iYMj70gZWKYbI706tWS" crossorigin="anonymous">
    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-q8i/X+965DzO0rT7abK41JStQIAqVgRVzpbzo5smXKp4YfRvH+8abtTE1Pi6jizo" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.14.6/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha384-wHAiFfRlMFy6i5SRaxvfOCifBUQy1xHdJ/yoi7FRNXMRBu5WHdZYu1hA6ZOblgut" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script src="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.2.1/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-B0UglyR+jN6CkvvICOB2joaf5I4l3gm9GU6Hc1og6Ls7i6U/mkkaduKaBhlAXv9k" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

    <!-- Font Awesome -->
    <link href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-wvfXpqpZZVQGK6TAh5PVlGOfQNHSoD2xbE+QkPxCAFlNEevoEH3Sl0sibVcOQVnN" crossorigin="anonymous">

    <!-- Moment.js -->
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.23.0/moment.min.js" integrity="sha256-VBLiveTKyUZMEzJd6z2mhfxIqz3ZATCuVMawPZGzIfA=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

    <!-- Tempus Dominus Bootstrap 4 -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/tempusdominus-bootstrap-4/5.1.2/css/tempusdominus-bootstrap-4.min.css" integrity="sha256-XPTBwC3SBoWHSmKasAk01c08M6sIA5gF5+sRxqak2Qs=" crossorigin="anonymous" />
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/tempusdominus-bootstrap-4/5.1.2/js/tempusdominus-bootstrap-4.min.js" integrity="sha256-z0oKYg6xiLq3yJGsp/LsY9XykbweQlHl42jHv2XTBz4=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

  </head>
  <body>

    <div class="input-group date" id="datetimepicker1" data-target-input="nearest">
      <input type="text" class="form-control datetimepicker-input" data-target="#datetimepicker1"/>
      <div class="input-group-append" data-target="#datetimepicker1" data-toggle="datetimepicker">
        <div class="input-group-text"><i class="fa fa-calendar"></i></div>
      </div>
    </div>

    <script>
      $(function () {
        $("#datetimepicker1").datetimepicker();
      });
    </script>

  </body>
</html>

Direct Usage

The challenge now is to have this input snippet integrated with a Django form.

forms.py

from django import forms

class DateForm(forms.Form):
    date = forms.DateTimeField(
        input_formats=['%d/%m/%Y %H:%M'],
        widget=forms.DateTimeInput(attrs={
            'class': 'form-control datetimepicker-input',
            'data-target': '#datetimepicker1'
        })
    )

template

<div class="input-group date" id="datetimepicker1" data-target-input="nearest">
  {{ form.date }}
  <div class="input-group-append" data-target="#datetimepicker1" data-toggle="datetimepicker">
    <div class="input-group-text"><i class="fa fa-calendar"></i></div>
  </div>
</div>

<script>
  $(function () {
    $("#datetimepicker1").datetimepicker({
      format: 'DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm',
    });
  });
</script>

The script tag can be placed anywhere because the snippet $(function () { ... }); will run the datetimepicker initialization when the page is ready. The only requirement is that this script tag is placed after the jQuery script tag.

Custom Widget

You can create the widget in any app you want, here I’m going to consider we have a Django app named core.

core/widgets.py

from django.forms import DateTimeInput

class BootstrapDateTimePickerInput(DateTimeInput):
    template_name = 'widgets/bootstrap_datetimepicker.html'

    def get_context(self, name, value, attrs):
        datetimepicker_id = 'datetimepicker_{name}'.format(name=name)
        if attrs is None:
            attrs = dict()
        attrs['data-target'] = '#{id}'.format(id=datetimepicker_id)
        attrs['class'] = 'form-control datetimepicker-input'
        context = super().get_context(name, value, attrs)
        context['widget']['datetimepicker_id'] = datetimepicker_id
        return context

In the implementation above we generate a unique ID datetimepicker_id and also include it in the widget context.

Then the front-end implementation is done inside the widget HTML snippet.

widgets/bootstrap_datetimepicker.html

<div class="input-group date" id="{{ widget.datetimepicker_id }}" data-target-input="nearest">
  {% include "django/forms/widgets/input.html" %}
  <div class="input-group-append" data-target="#{{ widget.datetimepicker_id }}" data-toggle="datetimepicker">
    <div class="input-group-text"><i class="fa fa-calendar"></i></div>
  </div>
</div>

<script>
  $(function () {
    $("#{{ widget.datetimepicker_id }}").datetimepicker({
      format: 'DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm',
    });
  });
</script>

Note how we make use of the built-in django/forms/widgets/input.html template.

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