Is it possible to set the initial value of a date picker in WhatsApp business flows?

Question

I am trying to use a flow for registration and edit profile in a whatsapp bot. Registration is straightforward but when the user edits their profile I need to pre-populate the data with the user’s data. This works for all values other than dates.

I have tried to specify the initial value for date of birth for example in init-values but that doesn’t seem to do anything.

Is it not possible for a date picker to have an initial value in a WhatsApp flow?

Answer 1

DatePicker can be initialised using a value expressed in milliseconds as a string. Here is an example where DatePicke is initialised to 15 Feb 2024 (in milliseconds, 1707955200000):

{
  "version": "3.1",
  "screens": [
      {
          "id": "WELCOME_SCREEN",
          "layout": {
              "type": "SingleColumnLayout",
              "children": [
                  {
                    "type": "Form",
                    "name": "form",
                    "init-values": {
                        "text_input": "Init text",
                        "date_input": "1707955200000"
                    },
                    "children": [
                      {
                        "type": "TextInput",
                        "label": "Text input",
                        "name": "text_input"
                      },
                      {
                        "type": "DatePicker",
                        "label": "Date picker",
                        "name": "date_input"
                      },
                      {
                        "type": "Footer",
                        "label": "OK",
                        "on-click-action": {
                          "name": "complete",
                          "payload": {}
                        }
                      }
                    ]
                  }
              ]
          },
          "title": "Welcome",
          "terminal": true,
          "success": true,
          "data": {}
      }
   ]
}