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Calendar DayView Control

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20 Jun 2006CPOL3 min read 1.7M   24.8K   375   510
A calendar DayView control.

Introduction

This article describes creating a day view control for visualizing schedule functions in required applications. I have cloned the Outlook day view appearance for similar use. Here is a screenshot:

Office 12 Theme:

Sample Image

Office XP Theme:

Sample Image

Background

Before writing this control, I was in need of a day view control that just looks like that in Outlook. I have found some commercial toolkits but none of them meets my requirements. Some of those want that all appointments be given before showing the control, some of those are not open source, etc. So I wrote this control in a "hurry development", and I think other people can use it. Pay back time for using the CodeProject :)

What we have?

  • You can create your appointment class to hold special information (other than start, end dates and title).
  • You don't need to read all appointments from the DB or something like that.
  • You can specify how much days will be shown.
  • You can colorize appointments to show different views.
  • In-place editing.
  • Drag drop operations.
  • No Win32 API.
  • Theme based rendering.

By the way, it's compiled under the final release of .NET 2.0. If you don't have it, you need to recompile the project.

Using the code

This control uses a class named "Appointment" to visualize the view. The DayView control doesn't pay attention to saving appointments to the DB or fetching them. So, you need to write your own DB logic and answer the events.

The control implements these events to interact with the hosting application:

  • dayView1.NewAppointment
  • dayView1.ResolveAppointments
  • dayView1.SelectionChanged

The sample application uses a list collection as the container for appointments. You may use a cached DB source too.

NewAppointment event

This is raised when the user wants to create an appointment. Event arguments contain start date, end date, and title values of the new appointment. You can create your appointment class that inherits from the DayView.Appointment base class.

The sample application just creates a new appointment, and adds it to the list collection.

C#
void dayView1_NewAppointment(object sender, NewAppointmentEventArgs args)
{
    Appointment m_Appointment = new Appointment();

    m_Appointment.StartDate = args.StartDate;
    m_Appointment.EndDate = args.EndDate;
    m_Appointment.Title = args.Title;

    m_Appointments.Add(m_Appointment);
}

ResolveAppointments event

This event is raised when the DayView control needs to show an appointment on a date. Event arguments contain the start date and end date of the required range of dates.

The sample application scans the list collection for a specified date range. You can fetch them from your own DB too.

C#
private void dayView1_ResolveAppointments(object sender, 
                      ResolveAppointmentsEventArgs args)
{
    List<Appointment> m_Apps = new List<Appointment>();

    foreach (Appointment m_App in m_Appointments)
        if ((m_App.StartDate >= args.StartDate) && 
            (m_App.StartDate <= args.EndDate))
            m_Apps.Add(m_App);

    args.Appointments = m_Apps;
}

Selection Changed event

This event is raised when the user selects an appointment.

C#
private void dayView1_SelectionChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    label3.Text = dayView1.SelectionStart.ToString() + 
                  ":" + dayView1.SelectionEnd.ToString();
}

The sample application shows the start date and the end date of the selected appointment in a label.

Points of interest

When I wrote this control, the hard part was sorting the appointments on screen without crossing over. The control internally uses an "AppointmentView" class to hold the state of appointments on screen. The rest of the code was drawing and isolating from the external application.

You may see some remarked codes about all-day events, but currently all-day events is not complete. When I finish it, I'll update this article. (Thanks to Claus Espersen for implementing the Office 12 theme and bug fixes.)

History

  • 14.07.2006
    • Bug fixes.
    • Start hour and start minute properties implemented.
    • Theme based rendering implemented.
    • AllowNew property implemented.
    • Mouse drag drop bugs fixed.
    • Internal changes for all day events.
    • Zoom feature implemented.
  • 11.09.2005
    • Initial release.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


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Comments and Discussions

 
AnswerRe: How do you delete appointments from your control? Pin
poison12-Feb-06 0:34
poison12-Feb-06 0:34 
GeneralSmall Help Pin
peter_john200516-Feb-06 13:50
peter_john200516-Feb-06 13:50 
GeneralRe: Small Help Pin
poison8-Feb-06 22:08
poison8-Feb-06 22:08 
QuestionRe: Small Help Pin
Mahesh Sapre8-May-06 23:47
Mahesh Sapre8-May-06 23:47 
GeneralLittle Bugfix Pin
a-nema18-Jan-06 8:10
a-nema18-Jan-06 8:10 
Questionvoid dayView1_NewAppointment(object sender, NewAppointmentEventArgs args) in Form1.cs not called? Pin
a-nema17-Jan-06 22:54
a-nema17-Jan-06 22:54 
AnswerRe: void dayView1_NewAppointment(object sender, NewAppointmentEventArgs args) in Form1.cs not called? Pin
poison17-Jan-06 23:26
poison17-Jan-06 23:26 
GeneralRe: void dayView1_NewAppointment(object sender, NewAppointmentEventArgs args) in Form1.cs not called? Pin
a-nema18-Jan-06 0:08
a-nema18-Jan-06 0:08 
ok, i uncommented the lines.

i found that

m_SelectedAppointmentIsNew

inside

protected override void OnMouseDown( MouseEventArgs e )<br />
{<br />
[...].br />
}


is always false and so

RaiseNewAppointment();

is still not called.
GeneralVS2003 Pin
ckl_8816-Dec-05 7:39
ckl_8816-Dec-05 7:39 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
antonydenyer15-Mar-06 4:55
antonydenyer15-Mar-06 4:55 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
ckl_8815-Mar-06 5:59
ckl_8815-Mar-06 5:59 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
ckl_8815-Mar-06 11:42
ckl_8815-Mar-06 11:42 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
antonydenyer15-Mar-06 21:03
antonydenyer15-Mar-06 21:03 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
ckl_8827-Mar-06 7:26
ckl_8827-Mar-06 7:26 
GeneralRe: VS2003 Pin
genesi36030-May-06 19:37
genesi36030-May-06 19:37 
GeneralCalculating overlapping events causes display error Pin
Alexander Bischofberger14-Dec-05 5:38
Alexander Bischofberger14-Dec-05 5:38 
GeneralRe: Calculating overlapping events causes display error Pin
poison17-Jan-06 23:32
poison17-Jan-06 23:32 
GeneralRe: Calculating overlapping events causes display error Pin
mblight30-Aug-06 23:31
mblight30-Aug-06 23:31 
QuestionVisual Studio Express Edition Pin
manni908-Dec-05 2:37
manni908-Dec-05 2:37 
QuestionRecompile Pin
manni9029-Nov-05 0:24
manni9029-Nov-05 0:24 
AnswerRe: Recompile Pin
kubben1-Dec-05 8:38
kubben1-Dec-05 8:38 
GeneralGood work! Pin
Christian Wikander15-Nov-05 19:33
Christian Wikander15-Nov-05 19:33 
GeneralWrong Category Pin
Darren Schroeder9-Nov-05 14:54
Darren Schroeder9-Nov-05 14:54 
GeneralRe: Wrong Category Pin
qiuqianren9-Nov-05 19:27
qiuqianren9-Nov-05 19:27 
AnswerRe: Wrong Category Pin
poison9-Nov-05 20:40
poison9-Nov-05 20:40 

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