$ lessc build/build_standalone.less datepicker.css
Data API¶
As with bootstrap’s own plugins, datepicker provides a data-api that can be used to instantiate datepickers without the need for custom javascript.  For most datepickers, simply set data-provide="datepicker" on the element you want to initialize, and it will be intialized lazily, in true bootstrap fashion.  For inline datepickers, use data-provide="datepicker-inline"; these will be immediately initialized on page load, and cannot be lazily loaded.
<input data-provide="datepicker">
Markup with component
<div class="input-group date" data-provide="datepicker">
    <input type="text" class="form-control">
    <div class="input-group-addon">
        <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-th"></span>
    </div>
</div>
You can disable datepicker’s data-api in the same way as you would disable other bootstrap plugins:
$(document).off('.datepicker.data-api');
Configuration¶
Options are passed to the datepicker function via an options hash at instantiation:
$('.datepicker').datepicker({
    format: 'mm/dd/yyyy',
    startDate: '-3d'
Most options may be provided as data-attributes on the target element:
<input class="datepicker" data-date-format="mm/dd/yyyy">
$('.datepicker').datepicker({
    startDate: '-3d'
Defaults for all options can be modified directly by changing values in the $.fn.datepicker.defaults hash:
$.fn.datepicker.defaults.format = "mm/dd/yyyy";
$('.datepicker').datepicker({
    startDate: '-3d'
Stylesheets¶
There are a few different stylesheets included in the library. This is an overview of what each file is to be used for:
bootstrap-datepicker.css gives legacy support for twitter bootstrap v2, bootstrap-datepicker3.css is used for twitter bootstrap v3 support
and bootstrap-datepicker.standalone.css can be used to include the datepicker without depending on the twitter bootstrap library.
No Conflict mode¶
$.fn.datepicker.noConflict provides a way to avoid conflict with other jQuery datepicker plugins:
var datepicker = $.fn.datepicker.noConflict(); // return $.fn.datepicker to previously assigned value
$.fn.bootstrapDP = datepicker;                 // give $().bootstrapDP the bootstrap-datepicker functionality