Remove a date or datetime from a form

khuslid · 09-23-2021 11:29 PM

Hi,
Just wondering if I’ve missed something here.
Is it not possible to remove a date or date-time from a field, without deleting every single element of the date or date-time manually?
Quite frustrating when you just want to remove a date and make the field empty…
A small option at the bottom of the calendar box next to “Today” could be “Remove” or “Delete”…
Is this a topic for feature request?

Koichi_Tsuji

you just create actoin to change the data in some column on the same row type action.
For date type of field, you just pass “” (null) to it to nullize the target field.
Is this answering to your question?

khuslid

Yes, and thanks!
I actually knew this, but shouldn’t this be a standard feature from Appsheet? Like “Today”?
Quite basic. Now we must make an action every time…
And not very UX friendly either. For setting “Today” you open the calendar picker, for removing, you push an action somewhere else…

And if you have opened the “calendar picker”, there is no way back for removing/regretting. Then you would have to save and go back to detail view, and THEN remove with an action. (Or remove it element by element - 6 times in a date-time field)

Koichi_Tsuji

If you mean to clear the date / datetime field value from form view, then yes, there is no ways to delete value instantly. Should be feature request.

Suvrutt_Gurjar

Hi @khuslid ,

Sharing the below observations if those help. It sounds that the date picker comes from the device OS or browser.

When I check a date field enabled with date picker, I get different date picker widgets for the same app in android device and app editor running on chrome browser in a windows PC.

Interestingly, in the android device, there is a “Clear” option for the date that I can use to clear the date field. In the desktop date picker, it is not there.

In summary, the date picker widget behavior seems to be based on device/OS and not under AppSheet domain.

Below are pictures of the date picker on the same app for the same field. So you may wish to check on a couple of mobile devices.

Android Mobile

Desktop Chrome Browser Windows OS

khuslid

Exactly @Suvrutt_Gurjar On an androide device this works easily and perfect. But not on desktop… Not sure for iPhone…
But shouldn’t Appsheet have a solution for this?

Suvrutt_Gurjar

Well, that depends on viewpoint. I think certain services are used from the device /OS and this falls under that category. Not sure if AppSheet can/should take care of all such edge cases.

Another similar example is emojis. Those render a bit differently on each OS / mobile device maker. The below link shows how a check mark renders differently on different devices/OS

khuslid

Hmm, yes for devices I understand.
But for desktop it could maybe have a “CLEAR” option from appsheet?
It is here the hassle is…

Like they have in Enumlist…

Steve

Correct.

AppSheet’s goal here is to take advantage of functionality the OS already provides. The expectation is that the user is already familiar with the OS-provided picker. You might as well ask why the OS doesn’t provide this convenience.

Yep.

Koichi_Tsuji

As @Steve rightly said, the calendar entry for data value is subject to which environment the app is opened.

Even on the desktop, we will see different calendar UI. For instance, this is from Edge

Looks differnet from what we see on Chrome, but still no “Clear” action neither.

Yes, this requires feature request, but not to AppSheet, but to Chrome (but again now it is same story as both Google)