jQuery.minical

PSA: This plugin's initial codebase is pretty creaky at this point, and working on it isn't high priority for me right now. I'm open to someone else taking it over, or just letting it fade into the technological distance in favor of newer code & interface techniques. Thanks for using Minical over the years, and although I reserve the right to suddenly change my mind and make it awesome again, consider this main fork dormant.

Usage

Include jquery.minical.coffee and jquery.minical.sass, then:

$my_cool_input.minical()

Feel free to check out the source on GitHub.

Why It's Awesome

Minical is teeny (~300 lines of Coffeescript), and has no dependencies other than jQuery. It has full keyboard support. It's an easy way to get your users to input a readable, parsable date value.

Skinning

Minical exposes a few Sass variables for easy skinning:

• $mc_font-family
• $mc_background
• $mc_border
• $mc_text
• $mc_highlight

Initializing

JavaScript date parsing is a pain, and it's entirely possible that the date format you want displayed in your input won't be one that JS can parse. If your page ever loads with a value already in the Minical-enabled input, Minical needs a JavaScript-parseable date in order to set its initial value properly.

In this case, you can just output a data-minical-initial attribute on your input element, give it a Javascript-parseable string, and Minical will initialize using that attribute instead of attempting to parse the value of your input. (Minical will also write that value to the input via the date_format method, so you don't even need to set an initial value for the input itself.)

Either string or integer formats will work, but the most foolproof data-minical-initial attribute seems to be JavaScript's conversion of a date object to an integer (e.g. +my_date_object). This renders a value of 12/13/2013 using the default date_format method:

<input data-minical-initial="1386967591204"> 

Interface

Minical tracks its own state internally, so just changing its input's value directly will cause the two to get out of sync. You can manipulate a Minical instance through some external methods:

• $input.minical('clear') clears the input and resets Minical to its initial state
• $input.minical('select', date_obj) sets Minical to the date specified by the passed Javascript date object. (This is fired as a change.minical_external event rather than a change.minical event)
• $input.minical('destroy') removes the Minical element completely

Options

• offset: positions calendar relative to the bottom-left corner of the input
  • x defaults to 0
  • y defaults to 5
• trigger: A function (run in the context of the minical-enhanced input) that returns a jQuery object of the desired trigger, or a string selector to specify a trigger element (like the calendar icon in the examples). The string selector can be a child or sibling of the element on which you call .minical().
• align_to_trigger: (boolean) align the calendar to the trigger instead of the input. Defaults to true.
• read_only: makes the date/text input only modifiable by the calendar. Defaults to true.
• date_format: allows you to output a custom date format from the chosen Date object (defaults to MM/DD/YYYY)
• from and to: date objects specifying min and max valid dates.
• date_changed: callback that fires after the input or dropdowns have changed value.
• month_drawn: callback that fires when a new month is rendered.
• appendCalendarTo: function; should return jQuery element. Minical appends to body by default.
• initialize_with_date: defaults to true; Minical will write the initial date to the input (either via data-minical-initial or just by displaying today)
• show_clear_link: defaults to false; displays a 'clear date' link in the calendar popout