Convert exposed dropdown filter to links Drupal Views
You can use something like this:

Add a contextual filter to your view for 'Content:created year"

Add a Header Global Text Area (Full HTML) with this in it:

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="by-date/2012"&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="by-date/2013"&gt;2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="by-date/2014"&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="by-date/2015"&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;


by-date is my view's path. Yours will be different.

Style it.

Looks like this without styling:



If you don't want a contextual filter you could create your date links with a query parameter like this:

by-date?date-filter=2015


Then use a views hook to read the query paramter and add the filter in code.