The goal of the datepicker widget is to populate a text input element once the user makes a selection. So the widget has two uses for the input element. First, it listens for focus events on the input element. This is how it knows when to display the calendar selector. Second, once the selection is made, the input element value is updated to reflect the date in the chosen format.

Presenting the user with an input element would work fine in the majority of cases. But perhaps for some reason, an input doesn't suit your UI well. Maybe we need a different approach to displaying the calendar and storing/displaying the selection.

In this section, we'll look at an alternative approach to just using the datepicker input element. We'll use a button widget to trigger the calendar display, and we'll disguise the input element as being something else.