Dates

[govuk-design-system]

Also known as: 'Ask users for dates'

Use this issue to discuss this pattern in the GOV.UK Design System.

Anything else

• Related to the 'date picker' component issue
• Read the draft guidance on 'date picker' component in Google Docs
• Download the code for 'date picker' from GitHub
• Related to the 'date input' component issue
• Read the draft guidance in Dropbox paper on Calendar control

[gazjoy]

For the "Year" field should users be able to enter "80" if they were born in "1980" or should there be a minimum length of 4 characters imposed?

[hannalaakso]

The GOV.UK Design System does not currently contain any specific guidance about the formatting of years as numbers. The GOV.UK Styleguide does not specifically mention it either but as it only includes examples in the 4 character format so, it would appear safer to do that.

If you have a specific use case where you think there is a clear advantage for collecting years as two digit numbers please add it here as it could definitely be something to include in our guidance.

[joelanman]

It's a good question. As Hanna says we don't currently have published guidance on using 2 digits.

Personally I think it'd be nice to support users who enter 2 digits if it's unambiguous. However I guess there's always the chance that for example if someone enters 30 in year and meant to put it in month. Requiring 4 digits would avoid that.

[stevenaproctor]

I agree with @hannalaakso that it is safer but it is clearer too. There are situations where ‘80’ could mean ‘1980’ or ‘1880’.

[adrianbiskupski]

What about use of two digit format in case of days / months ? https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates/ suggests that there should be a single digit in situations where two-digit would have 0 at the beginning. (ie. 03 07 1999)

[stevenaproctor]

@adrianbiskupski The pattern is flexible so 03 07 1999 and 3 7 1999 should both be accepted. But you should not force leading zero on days and months between 1 and 9.

The leading zeroes are not needed. Like @joelanman said not adding them is "ever so slightly quicker, and more natural - dates in the real world, calendars etc, don't tend to have leading zeroes. It's a 'computery' pattern and we try and stay away from those."

[edwardhorsford]

It was incredibly common for people to enter two digit years when I tested passports - even with the hint text. This might be related to passports showing a 2 digit year on the document - though most users will of course know their date of birth.

It was common enough I specified that we should accept two digit years - but I think I only allowed it where we thought it was unambiguous. For dates of birth of living people it's easier than years in general - no people born in 1880 are renewing their passport now.

If we hadn't done this, I think we'd have seen at least 50% of people on the page fail validation. It's not a major fail, but one we were able to avoid.

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For many services if you're collecting a date in recent years, you can pretty unambiguously cast it to 4 digit year. - but this would be something the service would have to think about it. I don't think we'd want to do it by default.

[edwardhorsford]

I wonder if anyone has looked at how we might offer commonly set dates. I'm currently pondering something like this:

[selfthinker]

When this pattern was in GOV.UK Elements, it had a note to explain the invalid HTML this pattern uses. It would be good to also have it in the Design System as the question about it keeps on coming up:

Note: The pattern attribute is not valid HTML for inputs where the type attribute is number. It is added deliberately to force numeric keypads on iOS devices.

[colinrotherham]

@selfthinker To double check, the latest HTML 5.1 spec still lists pattern as an attribute that must not be specified on number fields (just in case the spec was changed).

https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/sec-forms.html#ref-for-element-attrdef-input-pattern-16

Would definitely be good to add a note that we're non-standard here for a reason.

[ChazUK]

Just a small point that the example given for Date of Birth contradicts the autocomplete information that is given below it.

[amyhupe]

Hey @ChazUK – could you clarify how it does that? Thanks

[ChazUK]

@amyhupe I haven't delved to far into autocomplete before but my instinct tells me that it works on the name attribute of the input field. In the example code given for Date of Birth https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates#asking-for-memorable-dates, the input fields are given the prefix dob, whilst in the section below that states autocomplete should be used for Date of Birth the fields are prefixed with bday https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/dates#use-the-autocomplete-attribute-when-asking-for-a-date-of-birth

It might be a small point but just something I spotted.