I’ve seen a few suggestions on how to create manipulable calendars from date/time pickers etc. here, and they invariably seem to involve adding a lot of custom code to the page, so posting this in case it hasn’t already been posted somewhere.
This method uses only 2 repeating groups, any arbitrary datatype (it can be an empty one with no ‘things’, it really doesn’t matter) and the grouping function:
- Create your first repeating group with 1 row, 1 column and any datatype. In my case I am searching for the first instance of a Shopify order for a particular store since I want that to be my first month.
- Search for whatever your chosen datatype is as a source
- Use the group function to group by creation date
- Set type to month
- Interval 1
- Start date as far back as needed
- Check “do not skip empty groups”
- Set end date as far forward as needed (+9999999 years if you want your calendar to outlast humanity). Adding future dates will require an additional “show page of repeating group” function to make it start on the current month.
- Sort the data source as needed. I want mine to start on the current month, so sort descending with my end date set to current date time (the +9999999 is purely to illustrate a point)
- Create another nested repeating group inside it, datatype date, 5 rows, 7 columns
- This data source is entirely arbitrary, so do a search for something with the least (or no) things
- Group by creation date
- Set type to day
- Interval 1
- Start date to current cell’s date, since grouping the months automatically rounds down to the 1st day of the month
- Check do not skip empty groups
- End date to current cell’s date + months: 1 + days: -1 to get the last day of the month
Now it’s a simple matter of adding in text for the current cell’s date, plus some controls to change repeating group page etc. as you would in any other Repeating Group. Since we want this to function like a normal calendar and the months are sorted descending, my left arrow is show next, right arrow show previous.
Now you have a completely customisable, natively built calendar. I’ve added some additional flourishes to mine, but this can obviously look however you want it to:
