Web Components Calendar Overview

The Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar component is lightweight and easy to configure. It is used for showing dates and weekdays. It is also the best way for providing monthly or yearly views to end-users. The Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar control lets you restrict the minimum and maximum date ranges that people can navigate through.

The Ignite UI for Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar provides an easy and intuitive way for displaying date information. It packs different features like single or multiple date selection modes, highlight and select date range, keyboard navigation, enabling week numbers, size and spacing options, and more.

Web Components Calendar Example

The following Web Components IgcCalendarComponent component example shows a basic calendar with a single day selection mode. See how it works or inspect the code behind.

How To Create a Calendar in Web Components with Ignite UI

First, you need to install the Ignite UI for Web Components by running the following command:

npm install igniteui-webcomponents

import { defineComponents, IgcCalendarComponent } from 'igniteui-webcomponents';

defineComponents(IgcCalendarComponent);

For a complete introduction to the Ignite UI for Web Components, read the Getting Started topic.

The simplest way to start using the Ignite UI for Web Components IgcCalendarComponent is as follows:

<igc-calendar></igc-calendar>

Selection Modes

Users can choose from three different selection modes - single selection, multiple selection or range selection. By default, the Ignite UI for Web Components IgcCalendarComponent is using single selection mode but you can change it by setting the selection property as shown in this example.

<igc-calendar selection="multiple"></igc-calendar>

Range Selection

Following the same approach, we can switch selection to range mode:

<!-- Range selection mode -->
<igc-calendar selection="range"></igc-calendar>

Active View and Date

The Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar component allows you to switch between three different views: days, months and years. The activeView property of the component reflects the current view. By default, the Calendar displays the current date when loaded initially. You could modify this by setting the activeDate property. The activeDate property also reflects the changes of the currently visible date made by the end user.

Header Options

By default, the Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar component renders a header area which contains information about the selected dates. You could hide the header by setting the HasHeader property to false. You could also configure vertical or horizontal orientation of the header using the headerOrientation property.

[!Note] Please note that the Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar header is not rendered when the selection is set to multiple.

[!Note] Please note that the Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar DOM properties use camelCase naming while their corresponding HTML attributes are using kebab-case. For example the headerOrientation property corresponds to the header-orientation attribute.

The Ignite UI for Web Components Calendar component exposes a title slot which allows you to customize the title of the header.

<igc-calendar selection="range" header-orientation="vertical">
    <span slot="title">Trip dates</span>
</igc-calendar>

The following sample demonstrates the above configuration:

Localization and Formatting

Due to their very nature, localization and formatting are essential to any calendar. In the Ignite UI for Web Components IgcCalendarComponent those are controlled and customized through the following properties - locale, formatOptions, weekStart.

Let's go ahead and try those along with other customizations. First thing we need to set is the weekStart, which controls the starting day of the week. It defaults to Sunday, so we will set it to Monday. We will also customize the formatOptions property which specifies the options used to format the months and the weekdays in the Calendar views. Finally, we will set the locale property to a value, based on the user's location choice:

<igc-radio-group alignment="horizontal">
    <igc-radio name="locale" value="en" checked>EN</igc-radio>
    <igc-radio name="locale" value="de">DE</igc-radio>
    <igc-radio name="locale" value="fr">FR</igc-radio>
    <igc-radio name="locale" value="ar">AR</igc-radio>
    <igc-radio name="locale" value="ja">JA</igc-radio>
</igc-radio-group>

<igc-calendar
    id="calendar1"
    week-start="monday"
>
</igc-calendar>

this.calendar = document.getElementById('calendar1') as IgcCalendarComponent;
this.calendar.formatOptions = {
    month: 'short',
    weekday: 'short'
};

this.radios = document.querySelectorAll('igc-radio') as NodeListOf<IgcRadioComponent>;
this.radios.forEach(radio => {
    radio.addEventListener('igcChange', () => {
        if (radio.checked) {
            this.calendar.locale = radio.value;
        }
    });
})

If everything went well, we should now have a Calendar with customized display, that also changes the locale representation, based on the user selection. Let's have a look at it:

Disabled dates

In some cases you would want to have disabled dates in the Calendar which can't be selected by the end user. This functionality is achieved by using the disabledDates property. The disabledDates property is an array of DateRangeDescriptor objects. Each descriptor has a Type and optionally a dateRange which is an array of Date objects.

These are the available options for the Type property:

After - disables the dates after the first date in the dateRange
Before - disables the dates before the first date in the dateRange
Between - disables the dates between the first and the second date in the dateRange
Specific - disables the dates specified in the dateRange array
Weekdays - disables all weekdays
Weekends - disables all weekends

Let's create a sample that is disabling the dates between the 3rd and the 8th of the current month:

const today = new Date(Date.now());
const range = [
    new Date(today.getFullYear(), today.getMonth(), 3),
    new Date(today.getFullYear(), today.getMonth(), 8)
];

this.calendar.disabledDates = [{ type: DateRangeType.Between, dateRange: range }];

These configurations should have the following result:

Special dates

The specialDates property is using almost the same configuration principles as the disabledDates. The special dates have a highlighted look and feel and unlike the disabled ones can be selected.

Let's add some special dates to our Calendar. In order to do this, we will create a DateRangeDescriptor and pass the dates between the 3rd and the 8th of the current month:

const today = new Date();
const range = [
    new Date(today.getFullYear(), today.getMonth(), 3),
    new Date(today.getFullYear(), today.getMonth(), 8)
];

this.calendar.specialDates = [{ type: DateRangeType.Between, dateRange: range }];

The following demo illustrates a Calendar with a vacation request option:

Week numbers

You can use the showWeekNumbers property to show the week numbers of the Calendar component. You can do this by using its corresponding boolean attribute show-week-numbers like this:

<igc-calendar show-week-numbers></igc-calendar>

The following demo illustrates a Calendar with enabled week numbers:

Multiple Months

Using the visibleMonths property, you can display more than one month when the Calendar is in days view. When multiple months are displayed, you can configure whether you want to stack them vertically or horizontally by using the orientation property. By default, the orientation property is set to horizontal.

The Calendar displays leading and trailing dates from the previous and the next months. You could hide these dates by setting the hideOutsideDays property to true or using its corresponding boolean attribute hideOutsideDays.

<igc-calendar visible-months="2" hide-outside-days></igc-calendar>

The following sample demonstrates the multiple months configuration:

Size

You could control the size and spacing of the calendar inner elements using the --ig-size CSS variable. The default size of the component is large.

Events

The Calendar component emits the Change event when the selected dates are changed by the end user. You can subscribe to the event like this:

this.calendar.addEventListener('igcChange', ev => console.log(ev.detail));

If you traverse the page using the Tab key you should keep in mind that based on W3 accessability recommendations the IgcCalendarComponent introduces the following tab stops:

Month selection button
Year selection button
Previous button
Next button
Active date element

When a day/month/year in the IgcCalendarComponent component is focused, use:

PageUp key to move to the previous month/year/years page.
PageDown key to move to the next month/year/years page.
Home key to focus the first day of the current month/first month in view/first year in view.
End key to focus the last day of the current month/last month in view/last year in view.
Arrow keys to navigate through the days/months/years. Navigating before the first item and after the last item will switch the view to the next/previous month/year/years page.

When a day inside the days view is focused, use:

Shift + PageUp keys to move to the previous year.
Shift + PageDown keys to move to the next year.
Space or Enter key to select the currently focused day.

When a month inside the months view is focused, use:

Space or Enter key to change the activeDate to the currently focused month and switch to days view.

When an year inside the years view is focused, use:

Space or Enter key to change the activeDate to the currently focused year and switch to months view.

When the previous or the next buttons (in the subheader) are focused, use:

Space or Enter key to switch to the previous/next month/year/years page.

When the month button (in the subheader) is focused, use:

Space or Enter key to switch to months view.

When the year button (in the subheader) is focused, use:

Space or Enter key to switch to years view.

Styling

The Calendar component exposes CSS parts for almost all of its inner elements. The following table lists all CSS parts exposed by the Calendar:

Name	Description
header	The header element.
header-title	The header title element.
header-date	The header date element.
content	The content element which contains the views and navigation elements.
navigation	The navigation container element.
months-navigation	The months navigation button element.
years-navigation	The years navigation button element.
years-range	The years range element.
navigation-buttons	The navigation buttons container.
navigation-button	Previous/next navigation button.
days-view-container	The days view container element.
days-view	Days view element.
months-view	The months view element.
years-view	The years view element.
days-row	Days row element.
label	Week header label element.
week-number	Week number element.
week-number-inner	Week number inner element.
date	Date element.
date-inner	Date inner element.
first	The first selected date element.
last	The last selected date element.
inactive	Inactive date element.
hidden	Hidden date element.
weekend	Weekend date element.
range	Range selected element.
special	Special date element.
disabled	Disabled date element.
single	Single selected date element.
preview	Range selection preview date element.
month	Month element.
month-inner	Month inner element.
year	Year element.
year-inner	Year inner element.
selected	Indicates selected state. Applies to date, month and year elements.
current	Indicates current state. Applies to date, month and year elements.

Using these CSS parts we can customize thе appearance of the Calendar component like this:

igc-calendar::part(header) {
    background: #345779;
}

igc-calendar::part(date-inner selected),
igc-calendar::part(month-inner selected),
igc-calendar::part(year-inner selected) {
    background: #345779;
    border-color: #345779;
}

igc-calendar::part(date-inner current),
igc-calendar::part(navigation-button):hover,
igc-calendar::part(navigation-button):focus,
igc-calendar::part(months-navigation):hover,
igc-calendar::part(months-navigation):focus,
igc-calendar::part(years-navigation):hover,
igc-calendar::part(years-navigation):focus {
    color: #2dabe8;
}

igc-calendar::part(date-inner current selected),
igc-calendar::part(month-inner current selected),
igc-calendar::part(year-inner current selected) {
    box-shadow: inset 0 0 0 0.0625rem white, 0 0 0 0.0625rem #345779;
    color: white;
}

The following sample demonstrates the above CSS configuration: