Windows Forms DateTimePicker (SfDateTimeEdit) Overview

22 Jul 20262 minutes to read

The SfDateTimeEdit is a control that allows you to edit DateTime in the text or mask format with the support of minimum and maximum values validation, watermark, and globalization. It provides flexible options to display the date-time according to the required format.

Key Features

Editing mode - Supports the default text editing and mask mode that restricts date input to formatted values based on a date-time pattern.

Date-range support - Supports the maximum and minimum dates to prevent users from setting a date or time outside a specified range.

Globalization - Supports different date-time formats and patterns based on cultures.

Date validation - Supports date validation and error messages due to invalid dates or when date range constraints are violated.

Accessibility - Provides touch, keyboard, and mouse support to make applications available to a wide variety of users.

Watermark - Supports to display watermark text when a selected date is null.

Testing - Provides QTP add-in that contains custom libraries, which helps QTP to recognize SfDateTimeEdit.

Choose between different DateTime controls

Syncfusion WinForms suite comes up with the following different DateTime controls:

• SfDateTimeEdit
• DateTimePickerAdv

SfDateTimeEdit

The SfDateTimeEdit control allows you to edit date-time in the text or mask format with minimum and maximum values validation, watermark, and globalization support. It provides flexible options to display the date-time according to the required format.

DateTimePickerAdv

DateTimePickerAdv is an advanced DateTimePicker control. It provides an easy way to implement a culture based DateTimePicker in an application. It displays a string when no specific date is selected.

SfDateTimeEdit vs DateTimePickerAdv

Both SfDateTimeEdit and DateTimePickerAdv controls are used for the same purpose. But, the SfDateTimeEdit control offers a rich set of features over DateTimePickerAdv. To customize the updown and dropdown buttons, use DateTimePickerAdv. For date range support, watermark, navigation, and date validation, use SfDateTimeEdit.

The list of some of the specific API differences between SfDateTimeEdit and DateTimePickerAdv is as follows.

SfDateTimeEdit	DateTimePickerAdv	Description
AllowNull	EnableNullDate	Sets the value to null in mask mode.
Watermark	NullString	Specifies the text visible when the date is not selected.
MinDateTime	MinValue	Sets the minimum selectable date-time.
MaxDateTime	MaxValue	Sets the maximum selectable date-time.
DateTimePattern	Format	Displays the format of the date-time.

The list of features in SfDateTimeEdit over DateTimePickerAdv is as follows.

Feature	Description
DateTimeEditingMode	Support for free style editing with different mode (mask and default text edit modes).
Date validation	Shows error messages on the invalid dates or when date-range constraints are violated. To learn more about date validation in SfDateTimeEdit, refer to here .
Value change by mouse wheel	Changes the value by mouse wheel action. To learn more about value changes by mouse wheel in SfDateTimeEdit, refer to here .