UI Automation

C1Calendar supports User Interface (UI) Automation for identifying calendar elements, inspecting and changing date selection, and navigating calendar views. Automation clients can access dates, weekday headings, the calendar header, and month and year choices.

Enable UI Automation

Set AutomationEnabled to True before an automation client first queries the calendar. The effective automation setting defaults to false.

The following example enables automation and assigns an automation name and identifier to the calendar:

<calendar:C1Calendar
    xmlns:calendar="clr-namespace:C1.WPF.Calendar;assembly=C1.WPF.Calendar"
    x:Name="BookingCalendar"
    AutomationEnabled="True"
    AutomationProperties.Name="Booking date"
    AutomationProperties.AutomationId="BookingCalendar"
    SelectionMode="Single" />

For an existing calendar instance, enable automation programmatically before the first automation query:

BookingCalendar.AutomationEnabled = true;

Automation Elements and Patterns

The following table lists the automation control types and patterns added by this feature:

Element	Automation control type	Pattern added
Calendar	Calendar	Selection
Header	Button	Invoke
Weekday heading	HeaderItem	None
Date cell	DataItem	SelectionItem
Month choice	Button	Invoke
Year choice	Button	Invoke

Calendar elements belonging to inactive pages or view modes are excluded from the calendar’s exposed automation children and from automation control and content views.

Element Names and Identifiers

Existing nonblank automation names and identifiers take precedence over the following fallback values:

Element	Fallback name	Fallback automation identifier
Header	Text from the calendar’s header formatter	CalendarHeader_{ViewMode}
Weekday heading	DayOfWeek enum text	CalendarDayOfWeek_{DayOfWeek}
Date cell	Full date, formatted with "D"	CalendarDay_{date:yyyyMMdd}
Month choice	Month and year, formatted with "MMMM yyyy"	CalendarMonth_{date:yyyyMM}
Year choice	Year number	CalendarYear_{year}

Assign AutomationProperties.AutomationId to specify an application-level identifier for the calendar.

The default previous and next navigation buttons have the automation names Previous Page and Next Page, respectively.

Note: Date and month fallback names follow the current culture. Weekday fallback names use enum text, and the default navigation button names are English literals. Date-derived identifiers are formatted without an explicit invariant culture and should not be assumed identical across cultures and calendars.

Select Dates

C1Calendar exposes selection information through the Selection pattern. Individual date cells expose selection state and actions through the SelectionItem pattern.

Calendar Selection

The calendar’s Selection pattern exposes the selection in the active view and reports whether multiple selection is allowed through CanSelectMultiple.

The following image shows CanSelectMultiple set to False when multiple selection is disabled.

WPF Calendar Selection pattern with multiple selection disabled.

When multiple selection is enabled, CanSelectMultiple is True, as shown in the following image.

WPF Calendar Selection pattern with multiple selection enabled.

Date-Cell Selection

Date cells expose the SelectionItem pattern for the following actions:

Select a date.
Add a date to the selection.
Remove a selected date.

The following image shows a date cell’s automation properties and selection state in Accessibility Insights for Windows. IsSelected is set to True.

WPF Calendar Date-cell SelectionItem pattern showing IsSelected set to True.

Navigate Calendar Views

The header, month choices, and year choices expose the Invoke pattern:

Invoking the header cycles through Month, Year, and Decade views, then returns to Month view.
Invoking a month in Year view opens that month.
Invoking a year in Decade view opens that year’s month choices.

The following image shows a month choice in Accessibility Insights for Windows as a button with the InvokePattern.

WPF Calendar Accessibility Insights showing a month choice as a button with the Invoke pattern

The following image shows a year choice in Decade view. Accessibility Insights for Windows displays its Button control type and InvokePattern.

WPF Calendar Accessibility Insights showing a year choice in Decade view as a button with the Invoke pattern.

For information about calendar views, see Display Modes. For general calendar navigation, see Navigation.

Focus Reporting

When keyboard focus is within the calendar, automation reports the selected date or current month or year as focused.