my $parser = Date::Extract::PERLANCAR->new();
my $dt = $parser->extract($arbitrary_text)
or die "No date found.";
return $dt->ymd;
DESCRIPTION
This is a temporary fork of Date::Extract (last updated at 0.06) to add
features that I need. The features will eventually be merged into
Date::Extract. Currently it adds:
* Add 'combined' format
* Recognize yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss in addition to yyyy-mm-dd
MOTIVATION
There are already a few modules for getting a date out of a string.
DateTime::Format::Natural should be your first choice. There's also
Time::ParseDate which fits many formats. Finally, you can coerce
Date::Manip to do your bidding.
But I needed something that will take an arbitrary block of text,
search it for something that looks like a date string, and extract it.
This module fills this niche. By design it will produce few false
positives. This means it will not catch nearly everything that looks
like a date string. So if you have the string "do homework for class
2019" it won't return a DateTime object with the year set to 2019. This
is what your users would probably expect.
METHODS
new PARAMHASH => Date::Extract::PERLANCAR
arguments
format
Choose what format the extracted date(s) will be. The default is
"DateTime", which will return DateTime object(s). Other option
include "verbatim" (return the original text), "epoch" (return Unix
timestamp), or "combined" (return hashref containing these keys
"verbatim", "DateTime", "pos" [position of date string in the text]).
time_zone
Only relevant when format is set to "DateTime".
Forces a particular time zone to be set (this actually matters, as
"tomorrow" on Monday at 11 PM means something different than
"tomorrow" on Tuesday at 1 AM).
By default it will use the "floating" time zone. See the
documentation for DateTime.
This controls both the input time zone and output time zone.
prefers
This argument decides what happens when an ambiguous date appears in
the input. For example, "Friday" may refer to any number of Fridays.
The valid options for this argument are:
nearest
Prefer the nearest date. This is the default.
future
Prefer the closest future date.
past
Prefer the closest past date. NOT YET SUPPORTED.
returns
If the text has multiple possible dates, then this argument
determines which date will be returned. By default it's 'first'.
first
Returns the first date found in the string.
last
Returns the final date found in the string.
earliest
Returns the date found in the string that chronologically precedes
any other date in the string.
latest
Returns the date found in the string that chronologically follows
any other date in the string.
all
Returns all dates found in the string, in the order they were found
in the string.
all_cron
Returns all dates found in the string, in chronological order.
extract text, ARGS => dates
Takes an arbitrary amount of text and extracts one or more dates from
it. The return value will be zero or more dates, which by default are
DateTime objects (but can be customized with the format argument). If
called in scalar context, only one will be returned, even if the
returns argument specifies multiple possible return values.
See the documentation of new for the configuration of this method. Any
arguments passed into this method will trump those from the
constructor.
You may reuse a parser for multiple calls to extract.
You do not need to have an instantiated Date::Extract::PERLANCAR object
to call this method. Just Date::Extract::PERLANCAR->extract($foo) will
work.
FORMATS HANDLED
* today; tomorrow; yesterday
* last Friday; next Monday; previous Sat
* Monday; Mon
* November 13th, 1986; Nov 13, 1986
* 13 November 1986; 13 Nov 1986
* November 13th; Nov 13
* 13 Nov; 13th November
* 1986/11/13; 1986-11-13
* 11-13-86; 11/13/1986
CAVEATS
This module is intentionally very simple. Surprises are not welcome
here.
Thanks to Steven Schubiger for writing the fine
DateTime::Format::Natural. We still use it, but it doesn't quite fill
all the particular needs we have.
ORIGINAL COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
Copyright 2007-2009 Best Practical Solutions.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
