Is there a way to apply a mask to the textbox of a DatePicker?

Question

I'm working on my first WPF app. In this case, using VS 2010. My users are used to typing the date like this: "09082010" (without the double quotes; this would represent today). After they enter that, then it gets converted to 9/8/2010. I've put the DatePicker control onto the WPF page, but if the user enters 09082010, then it doesn't recognize it as a date and ignores it. I've applied a IValueConverter, to no effect, again because it doesn't recognize "09082010" as a date. So, I'm wondering, is it possible to apply a mask to the textbox of the DatePicker in VS 2010, so that when a user enters 09082010 it will change that to 09/08/2010 (at least)?

Answer 1

Here's something you could probably do: handle the TextBox.TextChanged event in the DatePicker, then in the event handler, put your custom logic to parse the current text. Something like this:

<DatePicker x:Name="dp" TextBoxBase.TextChanged="DatePicker_TextChanged"/>

private void DatePicker_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            DateTime dt;
            DatePicker dp = (sender as DatePicker);
            string currentText = (e.OriginalSource as TextBox).Text;
            if (!DateTime.TryParse(currentText, out dt))
            {
                try
                {
                    string month = currentText.Substring(0,2);
                    string day = currentText.Substring(2,2);
                    string year = currentText.Substring(4,4);

                    dt = new DateTime(int.Parse(year), int.Parse(month), int.Parse(day));
                    dp.SelectedDate = dt;
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    dp.SelectedDate = null;
                }
            }

        }

I know it ain't pretty. But this could be a start.