question about the datePicker available for windows phone

I'm just starting with windows phone development and was trying to get the datePicker to work. Searching for tutorials, all seem to be pointing to a reference to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Toolkit\Nov10\Bin\Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll

The problem is that i don't have this file (and after a computer search this file doesn't exist at all in my computer) so after looking some more, a found this link that says that i must install the toolkit. This seems quite not right(i was thinking this feature was fully integrated, not a alternate design being such a key-feature).

An开发者_StackOverflowalysing the feed i got from google, those link are pretty old(september - november 2010). Has Microsoft redesigned the method to acces dataPicker or is this method still the current official one?

I'm not fully sure of the reason but from the codeplex page:

Straight from Microsoft, both the Silverlight Toolkit and Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit provide the developer community with new components, functionality, and an efficient way to help shape product development. Toolkit releases include open source code, samples & docs, plus design-time support for the Windows Phone platform as well as the Silverlight browser plugin.

The easiest way to pick and choose what components to install is probably via NuGet. http://nuget.org/List/Packages/SilverlightToolkitWP

This is more or less the current way. The main changes are that there's now an easier way of getting the toolkit using NuGet and there is a later release that supports WP7 Mango.

I'd recommend getting the sample app so you can see good examples of Toolkit however.

Just download and install the Toolkit which is readily available in the following link,

Silverlight Toolkit.

Then Add reference to the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll in the installed folder. Then you can access it with adding the xaml code,

xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"