Business Central Musings

Did you ever need a DateTime field in your Business Central extension?

I recently added, in one of my customer extensions, a DateTime field, and wanted to allow users to not only record a date, but also a time.

The solution is not difficult, even if we need to write our own code.

But why not use existing code in Base Application?

Look at this sample code:

table 50110 "Sample DateTime"
{
    DataClassification = CustomerContent;

    fields
    {
        field(1; MyDateTime; DateTime)
        {
            DataClassification = CustomerContent;

            trigger OnLookup()
            var
                DateTimeDialog: Page "Date-Time Dialog";
            begin
                DateTimeDialog.SetDateTime(RoundDateTime(MyDateTime, 1000));
                if DateTimeDialog.RunModal() = Action::OK then
                    MyDateTime := DateTimeDialog.GetDateTime();
            end;
        }

When you run the page click on the “…” and see the Date-Time Dialog page:

The code above is using Page 684 “Date-Time Dialog”.

If you want to see how Microsoft designed the page, check this.

And if you want to see how Microsoft implemented it in Base Application check table 472 “Job Queue Entry”, fields “Expiration Date/Time” and “Earliest Start Date/Time”.

Look for all pickable DateTime fields in your solutions and re-factor them using “Date-Time Dialog” page.

Hope this helps!