Question

$('#date_arrow_from, #date_from').click(function() {

        $('#date_from').attachDatepicker({
            rangeSelect: false,
            yearRange: "2011:2012",
            firstDay: 1
        });

        $('#date_from').showDatepicker();

    });

http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/ – I am using something like this, but the problem is that when I click on the input I can’t write anything, the keypress event is blocked, how can I unlock the input to be enabled?

Answer 1

Looks like you need to set constrainInput option to false

http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/#option-constrainInput

When true entry in the input field is constrained to those characters
allowed by the current dateFormat.

Code examples initialize a datepicker with the constrainInput option specified.

$(".selector" ).datepicker({ constrainInput: false });

Edit

While the above was marked as accepted I agree with @Edd Morgan that you should try and take advantage of the built in input validation (I always do when I’m using it). To specifically allow dates in the ISO 8601 format you can change the datepickers dateFormat string very easily and the demo below has a good list of examples.

http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/#date-formats

$(".selector" ).datepicker({ dateFormat: "yy-mm-dd" });