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Free DateTimePicker for Compact Framework
Written by Carole Mitchell  [author's bio]  [read 66480 times]
Edited by Derek

         

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DateTime Picker for .NET CF

This tutorial is written in the hopes that it might help someone needing the datetime picker functionality get up to speed fast without some of the hassles that I went through trying to use the use datetime picker functionality in an application I was writing. I was very happy to find some code on the innovativedss.com forums adapted by various programmers in C# (Martin Stave and Jay Drozd) and then posted in VB.NET format by Chani Diakidis. This is great code, but it requires some modifications to the Load_DTPicker and creeper functions. I found that when I had a form that needed multiple datetime picker controls on it, I could create the first datetime picker control without a problem, but subsequent calls to the Load_DTPicker failed because the findWindow api used to get the handle to the form in question failed. Therefore the search couldn't be performed for the controls that were to house the datetime picker functionality. What seemed a good solution was to find the form handle before calling Load_DTPicker, so that is what I did, and I just passed this through to the function each time. So that problem was solved. Next I found that when I had panels on another panel on the form, the creeper function didn't seem to be able to creep through all the controls on the form and find the handles to each of the panels where the datetimepicker was to be created. So I modified the function and it seems to do the trick.

This step by step walkthrough and the accompanying .NET CF download should get you up and running in no time at all.

Step by Step - Creating and using the datetime picker control

1. Open Visual Studio.NET and create a new project. Call it DateTimePicker.

2. On Form1.vb place a label and a panel control. Change the text of the label to 'Start Date' and change the name property of the panel to pnlStartDate. Place another label whose text is 'End Date' and another panel called pnlEndDate.

3. In the form1_load event place the following code:

pnlStartDate.text = "pnlStartDate"
pnlEndDate.text = "pnlEndDate"

The panels pnlStartDate and pnlEndDate are where the datetime picker controls are going to be created. Their text property must be a unique string since the isDTPicker function uses it to search for and identify the panel. The isDTPicker function will return the handle to the control that contains this text, and this handle will be used to create the datetime picker control.

You should now have a form that looks like this:

4. Add a button to this form as shown below :

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