Sensenet DateTime Field Default Value

Question

When DateTime field is left blank, Sensenet displays (system default) '01/01/01 12:00' in the content browse mode. Can it display no value since it was not entered by users?

Answer 1

DateTime field's default value cannot be blank, so if you want to hide it in a Browse view you can use a script to check datetime values and if it contains 01/01/01 you can simply remove/hide it with js in the browser. There's a helper function to format dates (SN.Util.js 'setFriendlyLocalDate') which handles this issue with the default value too.

Answer 2

You can also solve this with server side code in your content handler.

If you instantiate a new DateTime object its default value is 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM, also specified as DateTime.MinValue. DateTime.MaxValue is 12/31/9999 11:59:59 PM. You then test for DateTime.MinValue to address formatting.

If you have content where you will be formatting and displaying dates a lot, it is often simpler in your Content Type Definition (CTD) to define a string field that corresponds to the date field. For example, your CTD could have fields like this:

<Field name="ReviewDate" type="DateTime" >
  <DisplayName>Review Date</DisplayName>
</Field>

<Field name="ReviewDateStr" type="ShortText" >
  <DisplayName>Review Date</DisplayName>
</Field>

Then in your content handler, you create a read only getter to display the ReviewDate:

private const string REVIEWDATESTRPROPERTY = "ReviewDateStr";
[RepositoryProperty(REVIEWDATESTRPROPERTY, RepositoryDataType.String)]
public virtual string ReviewDateStr
{
    get
    {
        if (ReviewDate == DateTime.MinValue)
        {
            return "n/a";      // Default string if date is not set.
        }
        return ReviewDate.ToString();   // Add date formatting here.
    }
}

Alternatively, you can create a field control that does that same thing.