How to set UIDatePicker to an initial date other than "Today"

Question

I need to set the initial date to something other than "Today" so the user is forced to make a selection. I have found that if the user does NOT make a selection, the date/time is set to "nil"; I can send an UIAlertView, but that is after the fact.

I have looked at SO and Google, but found nothing. How can I do this?

UPDATE: actually, I didn't state it, but the year is not shown, only month, day and am/pm. Without the year, they might not see a future date. T

Solution 1

One question, how do you know that the user will not pick that specific date that you set it to?

I would use

[datePicker setDate:[NSDate date]];

to display today's date on the date picker.

Solution 2

By doing this

[datePicker setDate:yourDate];

in viewDidLoad method.

Solution 3

You can set a date in the future, and then set also a minimum date so that the user can only choose a date in the future (if that's what you're looking for).

Programmatically

If you are doing all this programmatically you should use these properties:

@property(nonatomic, retain) NSDate *maximumDate;
@property(nonatomic, retain) NSDate *minimumDate;
@property(nonatomic, retain) NSDate *date;

With Interface Builder

If you are doing it via xib (or storyboard) file, in the attributes inspector you can set all the attributes: the date, but also the minimum and maximum date, so if you want that the user can't set today as date, but only a date in the future, use the minimum date:

PS: Change the format if you want to show only parts of the date.

Solution 4

NSDate *todayDate = [NSDate date];

NSDate *aGo = [todayDate dateByAddingTimeInterval:-6*24*60*60];

1. It will set minimum date for date picker

   [_datePickerView setMinimumDate:aGo];

2. When we open datepickerview the default date position is set here

   [_datePickerView setDate:[NSDate date]];

View more solutions

Comments

[Jonathan Grynspan]

Actually, [NSDate date] gets the current timestamp in the form of a double representing the number of seconds since I-forget-the-exact-date in 2001 at midnight GMT. The YYYY-MM-DD stuff you're thinking about is just the default format used by the class' -description method (used when printing an object to the console.)

[SpokaneDude]

Jonathan: I was thinking... if I set the default date to yesterday, which works... now, to train the users to change the date... Please change your comment to an answer... :D

[rmaddy]

@cory - [NSDate date] does not get the date in an specific format. What you claim is simply the result of logging a date object. Your whole last sentence is incorrect. And since a UIDatePicker shows the current date by default, there is no need at all for the code you posted.