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Topic: Enter date range for a record

Hello,

Is the functionality currently available to allow a user to enter a date range for a record, such as a year or a season? I know it’s not ideal to enter a vague date, but when we have a word of mouth record or historical data to enter and no way of checking this is often the only way.

Thanks,
Tamara

Tamara Weeks
Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (ERCCIS)

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Re: Enter date range for a record

Hi Tamara
Yes, Indicia supports vague dates. The only reason they aren't enabled all the time is that the date picker gets in the way a bit, plus the client-side validation doesn't understand all the different formats of dates so you'd have to turn it off (or code up a better validator). You can turn it on for individual forms by editing the form, finding the [date] control in the user interface configuration, then insert @allowVagueDates=true just below the [date]. This will change the behaviour of the input box for dates a bit, which you might decide is not perfect from the viewpoint of keeping things as simple as possible to use. There is another option - the User UI Options module described at http://indicia-docs.readthedocs.org/en/ … tions.html lets you set up an option in the user account settings so each user can decide whether or not to allow vague date entry.
Cheers
John

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

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Re: Enter date range for a record

Thanks for the info John.
Did a test to update this in the user interface for a form and I could manually enter dates (as you say - difficult  to manage this as so many possible formats) but didn't seem to be able to use the date picker to assign a date period - should I be able to?  If the only option was via the date picker so that there's a start and end date (in a valid format) this may work for us but for the main data entry forms I think I'll keep it simple. 

Cheers,
Tamara

Tamara Weeks
Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (ERCCIS)