jQuery UI Datepicker : how to add clickable events on particular dates?

Question

I want to highlight the dates on jquery datepicker where there are events attached to it (i'm not talking about js event, but real life events :D).

1. How to pass the event dates to the calendar?
2. How to make it clickable, either to display the event(s) with their url in a small popup tip, either to go to the event page?

Are there already available plugins or ressources (like tutorials) to help me achieve that please?

Thanks.

PS: I'm not using the datepicker to pick a date, only to access the events attached to a date

PS2: I'll use it on a multilingual website (fr and english), that's why I thought of datepicker

Answer 1

This is definitely possible, and in my opinion not too much of an abuse of the datepicker widget. There is an option to initialize the widget in-line, which can be used for exactly the scenario you describe above.

There are a couple of steps you'll have to take:

1. Initialize the datepicker in-line. Attach the datepicker widget to a <div> so that it will always appear and you won't have to attach it to an input:

   $("div").datepicker({...});
   

2. Tap into the beforeShowDay event to highlight dates with specific events. Also, define your events in an array that you can populate and send down to the client:

   Events array:

   var events = [ 
       { Title: "Five K for charity", Date: new Date("02/13/2011") }, 
       { Title: "Dinner", Date: new Date("02/25/2011") }, 
       { Title: "Meeting with manager", Date: new Date("03/01/2011") }
   ];
   

   Event handler:

   beforeShowDay: function(date) {
       var result = [true, '', null];
       var matching = $.grep(events, function(event) {
           return event.Date.valueOf() === date.valueOf();
       });
   
       if (matching.length) {
           result = [true, 'highlight', null];
       }
       return result;
   },
   

   This might look a bit complex, but all it's doing is highlighting dates in the datepicker that have entries in the events array defined above.

3. Define an onSelect event handler where you can tell the datepicker what to do when a day is clicked:

   onSelect: function(dateText) {
       var date,
           selectedDate = new Date(dateText),
           i = 0,
           event = null;
   
       /* Determine if the user clicked an event: */
       while (i < events.length && !event) {
           date = events[i].Date;
   
           if (selectedDate.valueOf() === date.valueOf()) {
               event = events[i];
           }
           i++;
       }
       if (event) {
           /* If the event is defined, perform some action here; show a tooltip, navigate to a URL, etc. */
           alert(event.Title);
       }
   }
   

   Again, it looks like a lot of code, but all that's happening is that we're finding the event associated with the date clicked. After we find that event, you can take whatever action you want (show a tooltip, for example)

Here's a complete working example: http://jsfiddle.net/Zrz9t/1151/. Make sure to navigate to February/March to see the events.