Intelligent Date & Time parsing

[shakefu]

I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

[Mike Driscoll]

On Mar 7, 4:08 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

There's the dateutil module that's a fancy wrapper for the datetime
module. The author's site has lots of examples as well as the source:

http://labix.org/python-dateutil

I use it quite a bit.

HTH

Mike

[shakefu]

On Mar 7, 4:08 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

I forgot to say, thanks ahead of time, and I'd appreciate any
direction that you can give me! (How rude of me!)

- Jacob Alheid

[shakefu]

On Mar 7, 4:10 pm, Mike Driscoll <[e-mail]:

On Mar 7, 4:08 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

There's the dateutil module that's a fancy wrapper for the datetime
module. The author's site has lots of examples as well as the source:

http://labix.org/python-dateutil

I use it quite a bit.

HTH

Mike

Holy Crap that was fast. I'll check it out - thanks for the help!

Jacob

[shakefu]

On Mar 7, 4:10 pm, Mike Driscoll <[e-mail]:

On Mar 7, 4:08 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

There's the dateutil module that's a fancy wrapper for the datetime
module. The author's site has lots of examples as well as the source:

http://labix.org/python-dateutil

I use it quite a bit.

HTH

Mike

So close - I tried it in the interpreter it works great for most
things (like "10pm tuesday") but I'm really hoping for something
that'll work with generics like "tomorrow", "yesterday", "last
tuesday", "next month", etc. Although I know that's pretty language
specific. I was just sort of wishing someone had written it before
me... maybe? Possibly?

Although if I end up writing my own I'll sure use
datetime.parser.parse to get everything left over once you remove
strings like "this saturday". So it helps a little!

Jacob

[shakefu]

On Mar 7, 4:22 pm, [e-mail] wrote:
[snip]

Although if I end up writing my own I'll sure use
datetime.parser.parse to get everything left over once you remove

I mean dateutil.parser.parse. Tomorrow I'll have to leave off the last
Lunchtime Guiness.

strings like "this saturday". So it helps a little!

Jacob

And on the same thought - does anyone know of a good website, resource
or community that's got intelligible descriptions of all the different
modules that are generally available? I know if I tab complete 'apt-
get install python-*' it tries to list 1000-some possibilities, so I'm
thinking there's quite a few modules out there that I might like to
know about and use...

Thanks!
Jacob

[shakefu]

I figured I might as well share the code I ended up using, in case
anyone else wants an easy way to get strings to, for instance, SQL-
storable datetimes.

jake@house:~$ cat test.py
#!/usr/bin/python
from datetime import datetime
import subprocess

def parsedate( date ):
p = subprocess.Popen(['date','+%s.%N',"--date=%s" %
date],stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out = float(p.stdout.read())
return "%s" % datetime.fromtimestamp(out)

jake@house:~$ python -i test.py

>>parsedate("today")

'2008-03-07 21:20:31.870489'

>>parsedate("tomorrow")

'2008-03-08 21:20:40.516243'

>>parsedate("next monday")

'2008-03-10 00:00:00'

>>parsedate("10pm last week")

'2008-02-29 22:00:00'

>>parsedate("last tuesday")

'2008-03-04 00:00:00'

Thanks to everyone who helped!

Jacob

[castironpi]

On Mar 7, 9:23*pm, [e-mail] wrote:

I figured I might as well share the code I ended up using, in case
anyone else wants an easy way to get strings to, for instance, SQL-
storable datetimes.

jake@house:~$ cat test.py
#!/usr/bin/python
from datetime import datetime
import subprocess

def parsedate( date ):
* * p = subprocess.Popen(['date','+%s.%N',"--date=%s" %
date],stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
* * out = float(p.stdout.read())
* * return "%s" % datetime.fromtimestamp(out)

jake@house:~$ python -i test.py>>parsedate("today")

'2008-03-07 21:20:31.870489'>>parsedate("tomorrow")

'2008-03-08 21:20:40.516243'>>parsedate("next monday")

'2008-03-10 00:00:00'>>parsedate("10pm last week")

'2008-02-29 22:00:00'>>parsedate("last tuesday")

'2008-03-04 00:00:00'

I am a GNU newbie. (I know C &o.) Can you point me to a place to
find the source for 'date'?

[Tim Chase]

I am a GNU newbie. (I know C &o.) Can you point me to a

place to find the source for 'date'?

It's part of the GNU Coreutils:

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/

Within the file, you're likely interested in lib/getdate.*

It helps if you have a working knowledge of Yacc.

-tkc

[Eddie Corns]

sh*****@gmail.com writes:

>I'm new to python and I was wondering if there are any intelligent
date/time parsing modules out there. I've looked at strptime (or
whichever it is) and mxDateTime from the eGenix package. I need
something to parse user input for a django app, and it's awesome to be
able to write "last monday", "a year ago", or "10pm tuesday" like
PHP's strtotime.

>So are there any modules that allow for that kind of parsing?

http://code-bear.com/code/parsedatetime/

[rockingred]

On Mar 7, 5:26*pm, [e-mail] wrote:

On Mar 7, 4:22 pm, [e-mail] wrote:
[snip]Although if I end up writing my own I'll sure use

datetime.parser.parse to get everything left over once you remove

I mean dateutil.parser.parse. Tomorrow I'll have to leave off the last
Lunchtime Guiness.

strings like "this saturday". So it helps a little!

Jacob

And on the same thought - does anyone know of a good website, resource
or community that's got intelligible descriptions of all the different
modules that are generally available? I know if I tab complete 'apt-
get install python-*' it tries to list 1000-some possibilities, so I'm
thinking there's quite a few modules out there that I might like to
know about and use...

Thanks!
Jacob

Jacom, the http://www.python.org/ site offers most of the modules,
including an index: http://pypi.python.org/pypi

Then there's the ASPN site:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePython