Best way to get date strings with Python

Question

What's the best way to get datestrings from a website using Python?

The datestrings can be, for example, in the forms of:

April 1st, 2011
April 2nd, 2011
April 23, 2011
4/2/2011
04/23/2011

Would this have to be a ton of regex? What's the most elegant solution?

possible duplicate of [Is there any python library for parsing dates and times from a natural language?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1495487/is-there-any-python-library-for-parsing-dates-and-times-from-a-natural-language) — Eli Bendersky, Apr 10 '11 at 05:41

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

2

Consider this lib: http://code.google.com/p/parsedatetime/

From its examples Wiki page, here are a couple of formats it can handle that look relevant to your question:

result = p.parseDateText("March 5th, 1980") 
result = p.parseDate("4/4/80")

EDIT: now I notice it's actually a duplicate of this SO question where the same library was recommended!

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

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answered Apr 10 '11 at 05:37

Eli Bendersky

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I ended up using six regex strings to find the most common date formats, but I'll give you the answer – Lionel Oct 03 '11 at 02:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 03 '11 at 02:30

    month = '(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|nov|dec)[a-z]{0,6}'
    regex_strings = ['%s(\.| )\d{1,2},? \d{2,4}' % month, # Month.Day, Year
                     '\d{1,2} %s,? \d{4}' % month, # Day Month Year(4)
                     '%s \d{1,2}\w{2},? \d{4}' % month, # Mon Day(th), Year
                     '\d{1,2} %s' % month, # Day Month
                     '\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.\d{4}', # Month.Day.Year
                     '\d{1,2}/\d{1,2}/\d{2,4}', # Month/Day/Year{2,4}
                     ]

Best way to get date strings with Python

2 Answers2