DATE VALIDATION dd/mm/yyyy (date field with manual entry)

[Former Community Member]

Is there a way to stop people filling in date fields manually?

since there is a calendar, there not only is no need for manual entry but it also avoids input error..



When I try to validate a date, it will either accept the manual date, or the calendar date but never both.



Does somebody have a solution for this? .. either to validate both the calendar date & manual entry (entered in dd/mm/yyyy)



Or

to prevent users from typing inside the date field (& use the calendar!)

(or prevent them from typing anything other than dd/mm/yyyy)



('ve tried regular expressions but it does not accept the value from the calendar)



Thanks hopefully!

[Former Community Member]

Hi - did you ever get an answer for this - to prevent users from entering text into a date field and using ONLY the calendar?
Regards,

B.

[Akyron]

Can you cut out all entry ability except calendar? I have hundreds of people entering the days in many ways which is messing up the field.

[tarekahf]

Dear All,



Forget it ! You will never be able to achieve what you are looking for in Date Validation.



What you got is what you got, not more not less, and you have to learn to live with it.



I would like to report also another problem which I am facing since ever, and just today I was able to identify the cause.



If you go to Control Pane, Regional and Language Setting under Advanced tab, the selection of "Language for non-Unicode programs", if you choose a Language say "Arabic", and after you restart the PC, then the Date Field of LiveCycle Designer will not work properly.



What will happen in this case ?



After you select a Date from the Drop-Down selection, then the date format is preset always to "DD/MM/YYYY", and the date value of say "12-Feb-2009" will show like this "٢٠٠٩-٠٢-١٢" (Indian Digit Shape), and no matter what you do, you will always get the same format, and the Date Validation will always report error.



So this looks like a bug, and I hope that this bug will be reported to Adobe Support Team.



Tarek.

[gkaiseril]

Tarek,



Maybe you should report this bug because you have the problem and will know the details.



The date field not only uses the calendar, and a formatted date string, but it will also process a UTC date. So if you really want to strictly control this, you will need to write your own validation script.

[Former Community Member]

One of the useful ways I found out to validate the date is using the small script below: 

Write this in the validate method: 

var d1 = util.scand("yyyy-mm-dd", this.rawValue);

if ( d1 == null ){

      this.rawValue = "";

}

[Geckoz100]

I've gotten some great help from others who helped me put together this great script.  Put it in the Validate event of your date field.  Remember to disable all validation from the Object pallet Patterns button.  The script allows the user to type only numbers and populates the slashes automatically.  Change the order the the mmddyyyy masks throughout, as needed.  I've been using this in many forms, works like a charm.

//Custom Date Validation Java Script for entering dates using numbers only
//With assistance from Ricardo Falegnami and BR001

// adding slashes
var newDate = this.rawValue;
// validate date
if (newDate !== null)
  { // process non-empty string
    var oMyDate = [];
    oMyDate[0] = util.scand("mmddyyyy", newDate);
    oMyDate[1] = util.scand("mddyyyy", newDate);
    oMyDate[2] = util.scand("mmdyyyy", newDate);
    oMyDate[3] = util.scand("mdyyyy", newDate);
    oMyDate[4] = util.scand("mmddyy", newDate);
    oMyDate[5] = util.scand("mdyy", newDate);

    var isDate = false;

    for (var i=0; i < oMyDate.length; i++)
    {
        if (oMyDate[i] !== null) {
            this.rawValue = util.printd("mm/dd/yyyy", oMyDate[i]); // strict format
            isDate = true;
            break;
        }
    }

// Stay in field if invalid
    if (isDate === false) {
        app.alert("Invalid date entered -- please enter in MMDDYYYY format, \n\nfor example, 051920152)", 0, 1, "CHECK DATE FORMAT"); // check validity
        xfa.host.setFocus(this)();
    }
}

[Al_NZ-qvcwdZ]

Geckoz100‌ I really like what your code does, or should do but I cant get it to work.

If paste the code into a custom validation script or even a on blue event for a date field nothing happens.

I watched the value of newDate = this.rawValue but it is always undefined?

What am I missing?

Cheers

-Al

[Geckoz100]

Hi Al,

Just to make sure we're on the same page -- this is for LiveCycle Designer, and the script needs to be in the Validate event of the script.  I trimmed the script down to accept only MMDDYYY entry.  This way there's no confusion; there were too many other masks.  The script works great for me -- the user just has to type numbers and the date is validated and slashes are added automatically upon exiting.  Let me know if you have any luck.

var newDate = this.rawValue;
if (newDate !== null) // process non-empty string
  { 
  var isDate = false;
  var oMyDate = util.scand("mmddyyyy", newDate);
  if (oMyDate !== null) {
  this.rawValue = util.printd("mm/dd/yyyy", oMyDate); // strict format, adding slashes
  isDate = true;
  }

    if (isDate === false) {  // Stay in field if invalid
  app.alert("Invalid date entered -- please enter in MMDDYYYY format, \n\nfor example, 05192016 (no slashes required)", 0, 1, "CHECK DATE FORMAT"); // check validity
  this.rawValue = "";
  xfa.host.setFocus(this)();
  }
}

[Al_NZ-qvcwdZ]

Well I am doing this in Acrobat, but I don't think that should matter should it?

Acrobat still has a validate event. I have also tried in the "On blur" event.

[Al_NZ-qvcwdZ]

My issue is that this.rawValue always seems to be empty?

[Al_NZ-qvcwdZ]

I managed to sort it out using this code:

     var fldDate = this.getField("DOB").value;

     var strDate = "12122004";

     fldDate = fldDate.toString();

     app.alert("Field Date is " + fldDate + " and the type is : " + typeof fldDate);

     app.alert("String Date is " + strDate + " and the type is : " + typeof strDate);

     var fmtDate = util.scand("ddmmyyyy", fldDate);

     app.alert("Print this is scand date: " +fmtDate);

     app.alert("THis is printd date: " + util.printd("dd/mm/yyyy", fmtDate));

It became apparent that the date (12122004) put into the field was stored as a type "num" and scand needed a string. Once I did the type conversion life was good.

If I was able to us this.rawvalue - the type conversion may not have been a issue?

I am now going to use regexp to limit my users to ddmmyyyy or ddmmyy.

Format like dmmyy are too easy to be interpreted either way.

Regards,

-Al

[Geckoz100]

I thought perhaps the javascript syntax might be a little different in Acrobat vs. LiveCycle.  If it's not, that's good to know.  But after working in LCD, I never do anything in Acrobat any more.

That type conversion was a smart move; I don't think I could have figured that out.  I'm not a very experienced coder.  But I don't understand why you were getting nothing from the rawValue; did you ever figure that out?  BTW, where is OZ?

[Geckoz100]

One other thing just occurred to me -- perhaps you have the script in a Date field.  I used a text field, so that I could run my own script without interference from any automated functions in the Date Field object type.  I don't know if that might make any difference with the type conversion issue.