Datepicker

Overview for datepicker

The datepicker allows users to enter a date either through text input, or by choosing a date from the calendar. It is made up of several components and directives that work together.

Basic datepicker

A datepicker is composed of a text input and a calendar pop-up, connected via the matDatepicker property on the text input.

<input [matDatepicker]="myDatepicker">
<mat-datepicker #myDatepicker></mat-datepicker>

An optional datepicker toggle button is available. A toggle can be added to the example above:

<input [matDatepicker]="myDatepicker">
<mat-datepicker-toggle [for]="myDatepicker"></mat-datepicker-toggle>
<mat-datepicker #myDatepicker></mat-datepicker>

This works exactly the same with an input that is part of an <mat-form-field> and the toggle can easily be used as a prefix or suffix on the material input:

<mat-form-field>
  <input matInput [matDatepicker]="myDatepicker">
  <mat-datepicker-toggle matSuffix [for]="myDatepicker"></mat-datepicker-toggle>
  <mat-datepicker #myDatepicker></mat-datepicker>
</mat-form-field>

If you want to customize the icon that is rendered inside the mat-datepicker-toggle, you can do so by using the matDatepickerToggleIcon directive:

Datepicker with custom icon

The startView property of <mat-datepicker> can be used to set the view that will show up when the calendar first opens. It can be set to month, year, or multi-year; by default it will open to month view.

The month, year, or range of years that the calendar opens to is determined by first checking if any date is currently selected, if so it will open to the month or year containing that date. Otherwise it will open to the month or year containing today's date. This behavior can be overridden by using the startAt property of <mat-datepicker>. In this case the calendar will open to the month or year containing the startAt date.

Datepicker start date

When a year or a month is selected in multi-year and year views respectively, the yearSelected and monthSelected outputs emit a normalized date representing the chosen year or month. By "normalized" we mean that the dates representing years will have their month set to January and their day set to the 1st. Dates representing months will have their day set to the 1st of the month. For example, if <mat-datepicker> is configured to work with javascript native Date objects, the yearSelected will emit new Date(2017, 0, 1) if the user selects 2017 in multi-year view. Similarly, monthSelected will emit new Date(2017, 1, 1) if the user selects February in year view and the current date value of the connected <input> was set to something like new Date(2017, MM, dd) when the calendar was opened (the month and day are irrelevant in this case).

Notice that the emitted value does not affect the current value in the connected <input>, which is only bound to the selection made in the month view. So if the end user closes the calendar after choosing a year in multi-view mode (by pressing the ESC key, for example), the selected year, emitted by yearSelected output, will not cause any change in the value of the date in the associated <input>.

The following example uses yearSelected and monthSelected outputs to emulate a month and year picker (if you're not familiar with the usage of MomentDateAdapter and MAT_DATE_FORMATS you can read more about them below in this document to fully understand the example).

Datepicker emulating a Year and month picker

The type of values that the datepicker expects depends on the type of DateAdapter provided in your application. The NativeDateAdapter, for example, works directly with plain JavaScript Date objects. When using the MomentDateAdapter, however, the values will all be Moment.js instances. This use of the adapter pattern allows the datepicker component to work with any arbitrary date representation with a custom DateAdapter. See Choosing a date implementation for more information.

Depending on the DateAdapter being used, the datepicker may automatically deserialize certain date formats for you as well. For example, both the NativeDateAdapter and MomentDateAdapter allow ISO 8601 strings to be passed to the datepicker and automatically converted to the proper object type. This can be convenient when binding data directly from your backend to the datepicker. However, the datepicker will not accept date strings formatted in user format such as "1/2/2017" as this is ambiguous and will mean different things depending on the locale of the browser running the code.

As with other types of <input>, the datepicker works with @angular/forms directives such as formGroup, formControl, ngModel, etc.

Datepicker selected value

The datepicker popup will automatically inherit the color palette (primary, accent, or warn) from the mat-form-field it is attached to. If you would like to specify a different palette for the popup you can do so by setting the color property on mat-datepicker.

Datepicker palette colors

There are three properties that add date validation to the datepicker input. The first two are the min and max properties. In addition to enforcing validation on the input, these properties will disable all dates on the calendar popup before or after the respective values and prevent the user from advancing the calendar past the month or year (depending on current view) containing the min or max date.

Datepicker with min & max validation

The second way to add date validation is using the matDatepickerFilter property of the datepicker input. This property accepts a function of <D> => boolean (where <D> is the date type used by the datepicker, see Choosing a date implementation). A result of true indicates that the date is valid and a result of false indicates that it is not. Again this will also disable the dates on the calendar that are invalid. However, one important difference between using matDatepickerFilter vs using min or max is that filtering out all dates before or after a certain point, will not prevent the user from advancing the calendar past that point.

Datepicker with filter validation

In this example the user can back past 2005, but all of the dates before then will be unselectable. They will not be able to go further back in the calendar than 2000. If they manually type in a date that is before the min, after the max, or filtered out, the input will have validation errors.

Each validation property has a different error that can be checked:

  • A value that violates the min property will have a matDatepickerMin error.
  • A value that violates the max property will have a matDatepickerMax error.
  • A value that violates the matDatepickerFilter property will have a matDatepickerFilter error.

The input's native (input) and (change) events will only trigger due to user interaction with the input element; they will not fire when the user selects a date from the calendar popup. Therefore, the datepicker input also has support for (dateInput) and (dateChange) events. These trigger when the user interacts with either the input or the popup.

The (dateInput) event will fire whenever the value changes due to the user typing or selecting a date from the calendar. The (dateChange) event will fire whenever the user finishes typing input (on <input> blur), or when the user chooses a date from the calendar.

Datepicker input and change events

As with any standard <input>, it is possible to disable the datepicker input by adding the disabled property. By default, the <mat-datepicker> and <mat-datepicker-toggle> will inherit their disabled state from the <input>, but this can be overridden by setting the disabled property on the datepicker or toggle elements. This can be useful if you want to disable text input but allow selection via the calendar or vice-versa.

Disabled datepicker

The datepicker normally opens as a popup under the input. However this is not ideal for touch devices that don't have as much screen real estate and need bigger click targets. For this reason <mat-datepicker> has a touchUi property that can be set to true in order to enable a more touch friendly UI where the calendar opens in a large dialog.

Datepicker touch UI

The calendar popup can be programmatically controlled using the open and close methods on the <mat-datepicker>. It also has an opened property that reflects the status of the popup.

Datepicker open method

Internationalization of the datepicker is configured via four aspects:

  1. The date locale.
  2. The date implementation that the datepicker accepts.
  3. The display and parse formats used by the datepicker.
  4. The message strings used in the datepicker's UI.

By default, the MAT_DATE_LOCALE injection token will use the existing LOCALE_ID locale code from @angular/core. If you want to override it, you can provide a new value for the MAT_DATE_LOCALE token:

@NgModule({
  providers: [
    {provide: MAT_DATE_LOCALE, useValue: 'en-GB'},
  ],
})
export class MyApp {}

It's also possible to set the locale at runtime using the setLocale method of the DateAdapter.

Datepicker with different locale

The datepicker was built to be date implementation agnostic. This means that it can be made to work with a variety of different date implementations. However it also means that developers need to make sure to provide the appropriate pieces for the datepicker to work with their chosen implementation. The easiest way to ensure this is just to import one of the pre-made modules:

Module Date type Supported locales Dependencies Import from
MatNativeDateModule Date en-US None @angular/material
MatMomentDateModule Moment See project Moment.js @angular/material-moment-adapter

Please note: MatNativeDateModule is based off of the functionality available in JavaScript's native Date object, and is thus not suitable for many locales. One of the biggest shortcomings of the native Date object is the inability to set the parse format. We highly recommend using the MomentDateAdapter or a custom DateAdapter that works with the formatting/parsing library of your choice.

These modules include providers for DateAdapter and MAT_DATE_FORMATS

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatDatepickerModule, MatNativeDateModule],
})
export class MyApp {}

Because DateAdapter is a generic class, MatDatepicker and MatDatepickerInput also need to be made generic. When working with these classes (for example as a ViewChild) you should include the appropriate generic type that corresponds to the DateAdapter implementation you are using. For example:

@Component({...})
export class MyComponent {
  @ViewChild(MatDatepicker) datepicker: MatDatepicker<Date>;
}
Datepicker that uses Moment.js dates

By default the MomentDateAdapter will creates dates in your time zone specific locale. You can change the default behaviour to parse dates as UTC by providing the MAT_MOMENT_DATE_ADAPTER_OPTIONS and setting it to useUtc: true.

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatDatepickerModule, MatMomentDateModule],
  providers: [
    { provide: MAT_MOMENT_DATE_ADAPTER_OPTIONS, useValue: { useUtc: true } }
  ]
})

It is also possible to create your own DateAdapter that works with any date format your app requires. This is accomplished by subclassing DateAdapter and providing your subclass as the DateAdapter implementation. You will also want to make sure that the MAT_DATE_FORMATS provided in your app are formats that can be understood by your date implementation. See Customizing the parse and display formatsfor more information about MAT_DATE_FORMATS. 

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatDatepickerModule],
  providers: [
    {provide: DateAdapter, useClass: MyDateAdapter},
    {provide: MAT_DATE_FORMATS, useValue: MY_DATE_FORMATS},
  ],
})
export class MyApp {}

The MAT_DATE_FORMATS object is just a collection of formats that the datepicker uses when parsing and displaying dates. These formats are passed through to the DateAdapter so you will want to make sure that the format objects you're using are compatible with the DateAdapter used in your app.

If you want use one of the DateAdapters that ships with Angular Material, but use your own MAT_DATE_FORMATS, you can import the NativeDateModule or MomentDateModule. These modules are identical to the "Mat"-prefixed versions (MatNativeDateModule and MatMomentDateModule) except they do not include the default formats. For example:

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatDatepickerModule, NativeDateModule],
  providers: [
    {provide: MAT_DATE_FORMATS, useValue: MY_NATIVE_DATE_FORMATS},
  ],
})
export class MyApp {}
Datepicker with custom formats

The header section of the calendar (the part containing the view switcher and previous and next buttons) can be replaced with a custom component if desired. This is accomplished using the calendarHeaderComponent property of <mat-datepicker>. It takes a component class and constructs an instance of the component to use as the header.

In order to interact with the calendar in your custom header component, you can inject the parent MatCalendar in the constructor. To make sure your header stays in sync with the calendar, subscribe to the stateChanges observable of the calendar and mark your header component for change detection.

Datepicker with custom calendar header

The various text strings used by the datepicker are provided through MatDatepickerIntl. Localization of these messages can be done by providing a subclass with translated values in your application root module.

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatDatepickerModule, MatNativeDateModule],
  providers: [
    {provide: MatDatepickerIntl, useClass: MyIntl},
  ],
})
export class MyApp {}

If you want to apply one or more CSS classes to some dates in the calendar (e.g. to highlight a holiday), you can do so with the dateClass input. It accepts a function which will be called with each of the dates in the calendar and will apply any classes that are returned. The return value can be anything that is accepted by ngClass.

Datepicker with custom date classes

The MatDatepickerInput and MatDatepickerToggle directives add the aria-haspopup attribute to the native input and toggle button elements respectively, and they trigger a calendar dialog with role="dialog".

MatDatepickerIntl includes strings that are used for aria-labels. The datepicker input should have a placeholder or be given a meaningful label via aria-label, aria-labelledby or MatDatepickerIntl.

The datepicker supports the following keyboard shortcuts:

Shortcut Action
ALT + DOWN_ARROW Open the calendar pop-up
ESCAPE Close the calendar pop-up

In month view:

Shortcut Action
LEFT_ARROW Go to previous day
RIGHT_ARROW Go to next day
UP_ARROW Go to same day in the previous week
DOWN_ARROW Go to same day in the next week
HOME Go to the first day of the month
END Go to the last day of the month
PAGE_UP Go to the same day in the previous month
ALT + PAGE_UP Go to the same day in the previous year
PAGE_DOWN Go to the same day in the next month
ALT + PAGE_DOWN Go to the same day in the next year
ENTER Select current date

In year view:

Shortcut Action
LEFT_ARROW Go to previous month
RIGHT_ARROW Go to next month
UP_ARROW Go up a row (back 4 months)
DOWN_ARROW Go down a row (forward 4 months)
HOME Go to the first month of the year
END Go to the last month of the year
PAGE_UP Go to the same month in the previous year
ALT + PAGE_UP Go to the same month 10 years back
PAGE_DOWN Go to the same month in the next year
ALT + PAGE_DOWN Go to the same month 10 years forward
ENTER Select current month

In multi-year view:

Shortcut Action
LEFT_ARROW Go to previous year
RIGHT_ARROW Go to next year
UP_ARROW Go up a row (back 4 years)
DOWN_ARROW Go down a row (forward 4 years)
HOME Go to the first year in the current range
END Go to the last year in the current range
PAGE_UP Go back 24 years
ALT + PAGE_UP Go back 240 years
PAGE_DOWN Go forward 24 years
ALT + PAGE_DOWN Go forward 240 years
ENTER Select current year

This error is thrown if you have not provided all of the injectables the datepicker needs to work. The easiest way to resolve this is to import the MatNativeDateModule or MatMomentDateModule in your application's root module. See Choosing a date implementation) for more information.

This error is thrown if more than one <input> tries to claim ownership over the same <mat-datepicker> (via the matDatepicker attribute on the input). A datepicker can only be associated with a single input.

Error: Attempted to open an MatDatepicker with no associated input.

This error occurs if your <mat-datepicker> is not associated with any <input>. To associate an input with your datepicker, create a template reference for the datepicker and assign it to the matDatepicker attribute on the input:

<input [matDatepicker]="picker">
<mat-datepicker #picker></mat-datepicker>