Pickers for Instants are awkward to use and produce unexpected results

[chipkent]

Version: 0.34.3

The picker is returning a type that is different from the table element. As a result, there are major hoops to make it work right in subsequent queries.

from deephaven import empty_table
from deephaven import ui
from deephaven.time import to_j_instant

t = empty_table(1) \
    .update("Time = new Instant[]{'2024-11-14T03:00:00 ET', '2021-07-11T11:11:11 ET'}") \
    .ungroup() \
    .update("X=i")

@ui.component
def make_it():
    time, set_time = ui.use_state()

    print(f"DEBUG: t={time} type={type(time)}")

    # types don't match so it doesn't select the right row
    t1 = t.where("Time = time")

    # this is a PITA for something that will be common
    time_forced = to_j_instant(int(time)) if time else None
    t2 = t.where("Time = time_forced")

    return [
        ui.picker(t.select_distinct("Time"), label_column="Time", is_selected=time, on_change=set_time),
        t1,
        t2
    ]

it = make_it()

[mofojed]

We probably have a similar issue with using on_cell_press with ui.table with timestamps @mattrunyon
Unsure how we can elegantly handle this solution, but we'll likely need some special handling somewhere for datetimes.