I have found through my web application development experience that it can be quite the pain if someone messes up a date. This is a huge headache for reporting purposes.

Methods to get around this can be one of many things. Validation for example simply forces the user to put in a date before they can submit information. Who is to say they are putting in the right date anyway? The ASP.NET calendar control is nice, as it gives a calendar and allows the user to pick a date. One method that I have found to work quite nicely for data that is entered for a day is to have the date set automatically.

What would be a scenario for this? The ideal setting is to track a date when an action is committed. Examples include form submission (no-brainer), requests, updates, etc.

For example, let’s say we have the following form:

<form runat="server">
  <asp:Textbox ID="dateBox" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</form>

Now, using the code behind file, we can write a simple line of code to send today’s date straight to the dateBox ASP Textbox upon the loading of the form.

With an aspx file, in the code-behind we can add an attribute to the Page_Load method to autopopulate a date (or set any value - same premise). Below we will set it within an IF statement for when the page posts back:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
  // This will happen upon a postback
  dateBox.Text =DateTime.Today.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");
}

Or you can set the value in outside of the PostBack IF statement:

  dateBox.Text = DateTime.Today.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

As you can see, that simple line of code will send today’s date straight to the textbox without the user having to enter it. We have included it in the page load portion to see that it fires upon, as you guessed it, the loading of the page/form. To break it down further, we can add some pretty neat attributes to the code to produce other effects:

If we want to add tomorrow’s date, we can use .AddDays(+1)

  DateTime.Today.AddDays(+1).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

If we want to add yesterday, we can use .AddDays(-1)

  DateTime.Today.AddDays(-1).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

Want to populate a year? You can use the same premise. As Nico VanHaaster has pointed out, you can call the AddYears() method to combat leap year occurances:

  DateTime.Today.AddYears(-1).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

As one can see, it’s a very simple approach to solving a problem with user’s entering a date and becoming frustrated if they have to do this more than once (such as they enter this data after each task on a given day).

Happy Programming!

Okay, out of fairness I thought I would post the same tutorial for my favorite dynamic duo - ASP.NET and C#. We will assume we are using the same database name or table name. We will work with a asp:DropDownList control such as:

<asp:DropDownList id="state" runat="server"></asp:DropDownList>

We will create a method called StateDropDown:

private void StateDropDown()
{
}

From there we will define our connection settings - typically what we have set in the web.config file.

SqlConnection Con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MySettings"].ConnectionString);

From there, much like the PHP example, we will create an SQL query that will scope the database table to populate the dropdown. We will assume i’m connecting to a database named info and a table named state.

string Sql = "SELECT * FROM info..state";

Now for the fun of C# - creating a dataset, filling the dataset, then applying that dataset to your asp:dropdown control.

SqlDataAdapter sqlAdapter = new SqlDataAdapter(Sql, Con);
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
sqlDA.Fill(ds);
state.DataSource = ds.Tables[0];
state.DataTextField = "state_abbr";
state.DataValueField = "state_id";
state.DataBind();
}

And now for the unmolested code:

private void StateDropDown()
{
//Define your connection
SqlConnection Con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MySettings"].ConnectionString);
//Create your SQL query/string
string Sql = "SELECT * FROM info..state";
SqlDataAdapter sqlAdapter = new SqlDataAdapter(Sql, Con);
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
sqlDA.Fill(ds);
//Define which control will accept this dataset
state.DataSource = ds.Tables[0];
state.DataTextField = "state_abbr";
state.DataValueField = "state_id";
//Bind the dataset to the control
state.DataBind();
}