Bash create calendar dialog with Zenity

This article will guide you to write a small bash script using zenity to create a calendar dialog. Of course, with a very short line, the zenity will completed this work. But I want to write more about it so that new beginners can understand it more easily and using bash create calendar dialog.

Use Zenity simple command

When you use the --calendar option, you will create a calendar dialog. Zenity returns the selected date to standard output. If no date is specified on the command line, the dialog uses the current date.

zenity --calendar

You can see in the below image, a small calendar dialog is display. The selected date is the current date (at the time I write this article – 02/01/2018)

Calendar dialog box supports options

The table below shows the options that the calendar dialog box supports. Note that these options will begin with two dashes at the beginning, because you may not see clearly in the table below:

For the --date-format option in the table above, you can see this link to learn more about the values contained in the strftime function.

Bash create calendar dialog

Our aim is to use the Bash combined with Zenity to create a calendar dialog.

The content of the script below:

#!/bin/bash
# Script author: Danie Pham
# Script site: https://devopslite.com
# Script date: 02-01-2018
# Script use to create a calendar dialog by using Zenity
# Adding a habit of writing into functions will be useful when you write large programs.

f_create_calendar () {
    if zenity   --calendar \
                --title="Demo create calendar dialog - WriteBash.com" \
                --text="Click on a date to select that date." \
                --day=1 --month=1 --year=2018
        then echo $?
    else
        echo "No date selected"
    fi
}

# Main function
f_main () {
    f_create_calendar
}
f_main

exit

Copy the script above, assign permissions to script and execute script. The result will be as shown below. If you compare it to the image above the article, you will notice a difference.

chmod +x create_calendar
./create_calendar

Conclusion

Indeed, the option to use the command zenity –calendar not difficult, it can be said is very very easy. However, I want to write an article that the reader can understand it most clearly.

(This is an article from my old blog that has been inactive for a long time, I don’t want to throw it away so I will keep it and hope it helps someone).