Python: convert free text to date

Question

Assuming the text is typed at the same time in the same (Israeli) timezone, The following free text lines are equivalent:

Wed Sep  9 16:26:57 IDT 2009
2009-09-09 16:26:57
16:26:57
September 9th, 16:26:57

Is there a python module that would convert all these text-dates to an (identical) datetime.datetime instance?

I would like to use it in a command-line tool that would get a freetext date and time as an argument, and return the equivalent date and time in different time zones, e.g.:

~$wdate 16:00 Israel
Israel:        16:00
San Francisco: 06:00
UTC:           13:00

or:

~$wdate 18:00 SanFran
San Francisco  18:00:22
Israel:        01:00:22 (Day after)
UTC:           22:00:22

Any Ideas?

Thanks,

Udi

see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1258712/fuzzy-timestamp-parsing-with-python/ — Nick Dandoulakis, Sep 09 '09 at 13:49

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '09 at 13:43

6

The python-dateutil package sounds like it would be helpful. Your examples only use simple HH:MM timestamps with a (magically shortened) city identifier, but it seems able to handle more complicated formats like those earlier in the question, too.

answered Sep 09 '09 at 13:43

unwind

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Seems great, checking it out. – Adam Matan Sep 09 '09 at 13:50
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Yes, dateutil.pareser.parse() is the relevant method in question. – Lennart Regebro Sep 09 '09 at 14:20

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 09 '09 at 14:39

3

parsedatetime seems to be a very capable module for this specific task.

answered Sep 09 '09 at 14:39

Alex Martelli

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 09 '09 at 13:48

0

You could you time.strptime

Like this :

time.strptime("2009-09-09 16:26:57", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

It will return a struct_time value (more info on the python doc page).

answered Sep 09 '09 at 13:48

Loïc Wolff

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Yes, but I'm looking for a module that would do the parsing for me - I guess this work has been done before. – Adam Matan Sep 09 '09 at 13:53

Python: convert free text to date

3 Answers3