Crate dtparse

dtparse

The fully-featured “even I couldn’t understand that” time parser. Designed to take in strings and give back sensible dates and times.

dtparse has its foundations in the dateutil library for Python, which excels at taking “interesting” strings and trying to make sense of the dates and times they contain. A couple of quick examples from the test cases should give some context:

use chrono::prelude::*;
use dtparse::parse;

assert_eq!(
    parse("2008.12.30"),
    Ok((NaiveDate::from_ymd(2008, 12, 30).and_hms(0, 0, 0), None))
);

// It can even handle timezones!
assert_eq!(
    parse("January 4, 2024; 18:30:04 +02:00"),
    Ok((
        NaiveDate::from_ymd(2024, 1, 4).and_hms(18, 30, 4),
        Some(FixedOffset::east(7200))
    ))
);

And we can even handle fuzzy strings where dates/times aren’t the only content if we dig into the implementation a bit!

use chrono::prelude::*;
use dtparse::Parser;

let mut p = Parser::default();
assert_eq!(
    p.parse(
        "I first released this library on the 17th of June, 2018.",
        None, None,
        true /* turns on fuzzy mode */,
        true /* gives us the tokens that weren't recognized */,
        None, false, &HashMap::new()
    ),
    Ok((
        NaiveDate::from_ymd(2018, 6, 17).and_hms(0, 0, 0),
        None,
        Some(vec!["I first released this library on the ",
                  " of ", ", "].iter().map(|&s| s.into()).collect())
    ))
);

Further examples can be found in the examples directory on international usage.

Usage

dtparse requires a minimum Rust version of 1.28 to build, but is tested on Windows, OSX, BSD, Linux, and WASM. The build is also compiled against the iOS and Android SDK’s, but is not tested against them.

Structs

Parser

Parser is responsible for doing the actual work of understanding a time string. The root level parse function is responsible for constructing a default Parser and triggering its behavior.

ParserInfo

Container for specific tokens to be recognized during parsing.

Enums

ParseError

Potential errors that come up when trying to parse time strings

Functions

parse

Main entry point for using dtparse. The parse function is responsible for taking in a string representing some time value, and turning it into a timestamp with optional timezone information if it can be identified.

parse_info

Utility function for ParserInfo that helps in constructing the attributes that make up the ParserInfo container