Date::Extract(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Date::Extract(3)NAMEDate::Extract - extract probable dates from strings
SYNOPSIS
my $parser = Date::Extract->new();
my $dt = $parser->extract($arbitrary_text)
or die "No date found.";
return $dt->ymd;
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 build a
DateTime object out of 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"
arguments
time_zone
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 => "DateTime"s
Takes an arbitrary amount of text and extracts one or more dates from
it. The return value will be zero or more "DateTime" objects. 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" object to call
this method. Just "Date::Extract->extract($foo)" will work.
FORMATS HANDLED
· today; tomorrow; yesterday
· last Friday; next Monday; previous Sat
· Monday; Mon
· November 13th, 1986; Nov 13, 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.
SEE ALSO
DateTime::Format::Natural, Time::ParseDate, Date::Manip
AUTHOR
Shawn M Moore, "<sartak at bestpractical dot com>"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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.
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.
perl v5.18.2 2009-11-19 Date::Extract(3)
