DatePickerDialog incorrectly enforcing a minimum date of Jan 1, 1970

Question

We have a member reporting that he is unable to set a date before Jan 1, 1970 on our DatePickerDialog. This issue does not repro for us.

I am already aware that the

Answer 1

I realize this question is a little old, and that this answer will not apply to older devices, but I've recently been made aware of this issue on a newer device (the Huawei Mediapad 7 Youth), so I figured I'd update this with newer information:

Starting with API 11, the methods necessary to do this are exposed. Remember, while Calendar may use Unix Epoch as zero, Java (at least until ~JRE 8?) uses signed numbers, so negatives are completely acceptable. Thankfully you don't need to be fully aware of this, as this code runs fine:

// This is API 11!
try {
    // Hack to (try to) force minDate to 1888 instead of 1970.
    DatePicker dp = dialog.getDatePicker();
    Calendar minCal = Calendar.getInstance();
    minCal.set(1888, Calendar.JANUARY, 1, 0, 0, 0);
    dp.setMinDate(minCal.getTimeInMillis());

    if (maxDate > 0)
        dp.setMaxDate(maxDate);
} catch (NoSuchMethodError e) {
    Log.w(TAG, "Can't set min/max dates: device/Android version is too old.");
}

I used 1888 so that any reports stating this is the minimum will make it clear that the code was executed and not ignored/overridden. I should note I have not yet heard back whether or not this works on the reported device.