Hello All,
As I am getting lot of emails and questions about date and datetime fields for Grocery CRUD Enterprise, I thought that it would be good to have an explanation about why Grocery CRUD Enteprise has took some different decisions for the dates from the community one. What mistakes did we make and why and what we will do at the future about it. So let's answer some questions:
Why you did change the dates from grocery CRUD community Johnny?
Many people was wondering why to change the dates from Community edition when it is already too good and it has the below features:
- date format can be specified by the developer
- the language of date is in the main language chosen from grocery CRUD
- the input looks the same for all the browsers
The answer for that is that I wanted to take it one step further. So the main reason that I did it was:
- date format is specified by the OS (e.g. Windows) of the user. So that mean that if the user for any reason want to change the format, it can happen by changing the format at his laptop/PC
- the UI/UX of the type date and datetime it is just amazing and really easy to use. Moreover you are familiar with it.
- the implementation is very easy and that means that it needs much less code in order to implement it
- we will always have the fallback of jQuery UI in case that the browser does not support it but I thought that very soon all the browsers will have them
- full mobile compatible. I think an image will convince you for that: https://mdn.mozillademos.org/files/14915/date-picker-fxa.png
- no need for extra translation of the days/months... e.t.c. as the input type date support all of that
The thing is that I saw users complaining about format and I have to be honest I didn't thought about some simple things:
- the language of the keyboard may be in English so the user will see English days instead of their native language
- famous browsers such us firefox and safari doesn't have in their plans to include input type date :(
- the transformation of the date in the columns is a bit unstable
- the developer wants to specify the date format so users will not be confused when they are traveling.
ok. So now that you saw there are some issues, what are your next steps?
I wanted to focus to other small bugs (not related with dates) and I didn't have the time to change the behaviour of date and datetime as it is really time consuming. The good news is that I've already answer with some work-arounds at the forums and don't get me wrong but for most of the users the date issues was not even noticeable. The only exception is the search of the dates that was frustrated (and noticeable) but now at the latest version (2.3.7) the column search for date and datetime has been improved as well. So what I am saying is that I can understand your urgency from your bosses/customers ( I really do!) but I really prefer to take my time and do it right rather than rush it and produce extra bugs.
When are you going to do the changes that you are mentioning above?
Now for this I can't commit to any date just yet but this is now my next priority. If you would like to get informed once this new version is available please right a comment below with a "+1".
Thank you all for the feedback that I am getting for Grocery CRUD Enterprise as it is very positive and it also helps me improve the product.
Happy GCing :)