Introduction to UIDatePicker in Swift
In this tutorial we are going to learn about UIDatePicker to select a date in swift i.e how to create and use UIDatePicker in swift. UIDatepicker is the control provided by UIKit framework packaged with xcode IDE. It allows user to pick date from the spinning wheel that act same as drop down option in web. You can use UIDatePicker in your app where you want to allow user to enter or input
- a Date
- both Date and Time
- only Time
- Countdown timer
Steps to create UIDatePicker in swift
Step 1: Create a new xcode project and name it “UIDatePicker-Swift“, if you are not familiar with creating xcode project you can check here
Step 2: Open Main.storyboard and drag UIDatePicker on to the view.
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| UIDatePicker added to the view |
Step 3: Add constraint to UIDatePicker. Shown in the image below
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| Add constraints to UIDatePicker |
Step 4: In ViewController.swift, create an IBOutlet to UIDatePicker
@IBOutlet weak var datePicker: UIDatePicker!
Step 5: Open Main.storyboard and connect our IBOutlet created in step 3 to the UIDatePicker placed on the view as shown in the image below
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| Connecting IBOutlet to UIDatePicker |
Step 6: Set current date as our UIDatePicker date, so that when screen launches/shown to the user it display current date as selected date
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
self.datePicker.date = NSDate.init(timeIntervalSinceNow: 0) as Date
}
Step 7: Run your code, you will see UIDatePicker showing current date as selected date.
Get selected date from UIDatePicker
Till now you created UIDatePicker successfully, now the question is how can we get date selected by user. For this we can do two things
- will add a button and add IBAction to it so that when user tap on button we will get our selected date.
- Add our IBAction to UIDatePicker and assign it to ValueChanged event, so that whenever UIDatePicker date changed it notifies us
Step 8: Open Main.storyboard and add UIButton to it. Add constraint to it as shown in below image
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| Adding constraints to UIButton |
Step 9: Open ViewController.swift and create our IBActions, one for
- Button Tap event
- UIDatePicker value change event
Below is the code that solve our purpose in both ways
@IBAction func doneWithDateSelection(_ sender :AnyObject) {
print(“Date Selected through button == “, datePicker.date)
}
@IBAction func pickerDateSelectionChanged(_ sender :AnyObject) {
print(“Date Selected via UIDatePicker value change == “, datePicker.date)
}
Step 10: Open Main.storyboard and add IBaction to UIButton and UIDatePicker as shown below
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| Connecting IBAction to UIButton |
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| Connecting IBAction to UIDatePicker |
Step 11: Run your app and you will see date in console when you tap on Button or change UIDatePicker value.
Step 12: If you see your date on console, you will get time also. In order to get only you have to get date with dateformatter class given by xcode. Below is the complete code that
Complete code which print date only when user tap on button or change date picker value
Complete Code
//
// ViewController.swift
// UIDatePicker-Swift
//
// Created by Aman Aggarwal on 12/21/16.
// Copyright © 2016 iostutorialjunction. All rights reserved.
//
import UIKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {
@IBOutlet weak var datePicker: UIDatePicker!
var dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
self.datePicker.date = NSDate.init(timeIntervalSinceNow: 0) as Date
dateFormatter.dateFormat = “MM/dd/yyyy”
}
override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
@IBAction func doneWithDateSelection(_ sender :AnyObject) {
print(“Date Selected through button == “, dateFormatter.string(from: datePicker.date))
}
@IBAction func pickerDateSelectionChanged(_ sender :AnyObject) {
print(“Date Selected via UIDatePicker value change== “, dateFormatter.string(from: datePicker.date))
}
}
Where to go from here
In this tutorial you learned about UIDatePicker in swift and how to print/select date form UIDatePicker in swift without time using dateformatter. You can get the whole code sample from here .
If you have any concerns than you can comment here. Happy Coding 🙂
If you have any concerns than you can comment here. Happy Coding 🙂