How to Build a Date Picker Using the React-Bootstrap Library

1. Date Picker Component From the react-bootstrap Library in React
2. Use the <Form> Component as a Date Picker in React

React is one of the most popular libraries for building Single Page Applications. React developers can build components with any appearance and functionality.

Still, just because you can build anything from scratch doesn’t mean you should.

Building every component from scratch can be very time-consuming. This is especially true for components with complex functionality, such as date (or date range) picker.

UI component libraries like MUI and react-bootstrap come with custom components with common functionalities and expected features.

Date Picker Component From the react-bootstrap Library in React

Certain web applications cannot work without date pickers. For instance, booking platforms or any other app to select the dates cannot work without date pickers.

Since many projects need date pickers, UI component libraries like react-bootstrap include them and give you access to API to customize their behavior. This way, React developers don’t need to unnecessarily build date pickers from scratch.

Use the <Form> Component as a Date Picker in React

We mentioned that the react-bootstrap library includes a custom date picker component. Technically, that’s not true, but there’s an easy solution to get similar functionality from the <Form> component.

Its built-in API allows us to give the component a date-picking functionality. You can check out the official documentation to learn more about the <Form> component and the possibilities of extending its functionality.

The type prop on the <Form> component is especially important. It allows us to cast the entire form in one way or another.

To create a date picker, you can set the type to date.

import Form from "react-bootstrap/Form";
export default function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <Form.Control type="date"></Form.Control>
    </div>
  );
}

You must import the default component from the react-bootstrap/form directory and use the <Form.Control> to invoke the component. Doing this can save many efforts in building the component yourself, styling it, and configuring its functionality.

This custom component looks good right out of the box. You can check the live demo on CodeSandbox.