dateparser provides modules to easily parse localized dates in almost any string formats commonly found on web pages.

Documentation is built automatically and can be found on Read the Docs.

• Generic parsing of dates in over 200 language locales plus numerous formats in a language agnostic fashion.
• Generic parsing of relative dates like: '1 min ago', '2 weeks ago', '3 months, 1 week and 1 day ago', 'in 2 days', 'tomorrow'.
• Generic parsing of dates with time zones abbreviations or UTC offsets like: 'August 14, 2015 EST', 'July 4, 2013 PST', '21 July 2013 10:15 pm +0500'.
• Date lookup in longer texts.
• Support for non-Gregorian calendar systems. See Supported Calendars.
• Extensive test coverage.

The most straightforward way is to use the dateparser.parse function, that wraps around most of the functionality in the module.

>>> import dateparser >>> dateparser.parse('12/12/12') datetime.datetime(2012, 12, 12, 0, 0) >>> dateparser.parse(u'Fri, 12 Dec 2014 10:55:50') datetime.datetime(2014, 12, 12, 10, 55, 50) >>> dateparser.parse(u'Martes 21 de Octubre de 2014') # Spanish (Tuesday 21 October 2014) datetime.datetime(2014, 10, 21, 0, 0) >>> dateparser.parse(u'Le 11 Décembre 2014 à 09:00') # French (11 December 2014 at 09:00) datetime.datetime(2014, 12, 11, 9, 0) >>> dateparser.parse(u'13 января 2015 г. в 13:34') # Russian (13 January 2015 at 13:34) datetime.datetime(2015, 1, 13, 13, 34) >>> dateparser.parse(u'1 เดือนตุลาคม 2005, 1:00 AM') # Thai (1 October 2005, 1:00 AM) datetime.datetime(2005, 10, 1, 1, 0)

This will try to parse a date from the given string, attempting to detect the language each time.

You can specify the language(s), if known, using languages argument. In this case, given languages are used and language detection is skipped:

>>> dateparser.parse('2015, Ago 15, 1:08 pm', languages=['pt', 'es']) datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 15, 13, 8)

If you know the possible formats of the dates, you can use the date_formats argument:

>>> dateparser.parse(u'22 Décembre 2010', date_formats=['%d %B %Y']) datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 22, 0, 0)

>>> parse('1 hour ago') datetime.datetime(2015, 5, 31, 23, 0) >>> parse(u'Il ya 2 heures') # French (2 hours ago) datetime.datetime(2015, 5, 31, 22, 0) >>> parse(u'1 anno 2 mesi') # Italian (1 year 2 months) datetime.datetime(2014, 4, 1, 0, 0) >>> parse(u'yaklaşık 23 saat önce') # Turkish (23 hours ago) datetime.datetime(2015, 5, 31, 1, 0) >>> parse(u'Hace una semana') # Spanish (a week ago) datetime.datetime(2015, 5, 25, 0, 0) >>> parse(u'2小时前') # Chinese (2 hours ago) datetime.datetime(2015, 5, 31, 22, 0)

>>> # parsing ambiguous date >>> parse('02-03-2016') # assumes english language, uses MDY date order datetime.datetime(2016, 3, 2, 0, 0) >>> parse('le 02-03-2016') # detects french, uses DMY date order datetime.datetime(2016, 3, 2, 0, 0)

For more on date order, please look at Settings.

By default, dateparser returns tzaware datetime if timezone is present in date string. Otherwise, it returns a naive datetime object.

>>> parse('January 12, 2012 10:00 PM EST') datetime.datetime(2012, 1, 12, 22, 0, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'EST'>)

>>> parse('January 12, 2012 10:00 PM -0500') datetime.datetime(2012, 1, 12, 22, 0, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC-05:00'>)

>>> parse('2 hours ago EST') datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 10, 15, 55, 39, 579667, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'EST'>)

>>> parse('2 hours ago -0500') datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 10, 15, 59, 30, 193431, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC-05:00'>)

If date has no timezone name/abbreviation or offset, you can specify it using TIMEZONE setting.

>>> parse('January 12, 2012 10:00 PM', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'US/Eastern'}) datetime.datetime(2012, 1, 12, 22, 0)

>>> parse('January 12, 2012 10:00 PM', settings={'TIMEZONE': '+0500'}) datetime.datetime(2012, 1, 12, 22, 0)

TIMEZONE option may not be useful alone as it only attaches given timezone to resultant datetime object. But can be useful in cases where you want conversions from and to different timezones or when simply want a tzaware date with given timezone info attached.

>>> parse('January 12, 2012 10:00 PM', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'US/Eastern', 'RETURN_AS_TIMEZONE_AWARE': True}) datetime.datetime(2012, 1, 12, 22, 0, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'US/Eastern' EST-1 day, 19:00:00 STD>)

>>> parse('10:00 am', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'EST', 'TO_TIMEZONE': 'EDT'}) datetime.datetime(2016, 9, 25, 11, 0)

Some more use cases for conversion of timezones.

>>> parse('10:00 am EST', settings={'TO_TIMEZONE': 'EDT'}) # date string has timezone info datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 12, 11, 0, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'EDT'>)

>>> parse('now EST', settings={'TO_TIMEZONE': 'UTC'}) # relative dates datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 10, 23, 24, 47, 371823, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC'>)

In case, no timezone is present in date string or defined in settings. You can still return tzaware datetime. It is especially useful in case of relative dates when uncertain what timezone is relative base.

>>> parse('2 minutes ago', settings={'RETURN_AS_TIMEZONE_AWARE': True}) datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 11, 4, 25, 24, 152670, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Asia/Karachi' PKT+5:00:00 STD>)

In case, you want to compute relative dates in UTC instead of default system's local timezone, you can use TIMEZONE setting.

>>> parse('4 minutes ago', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'UTC'}) datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 10, 23, 27, 59, 647248, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC'>)

For more on timezones, please look at Settings.

>>> from dateparser import parse >>> parse(u'December 2015') # default behavior datetime.datetime(2015, 12, 16, 0, 0) >>> parse(u'December 2015', settings={'PREFER_DAY_OF_MONTH': 'last'}) datetime.datetime(2015, 12, 31, 0, 0) >>> parse(u'December 2015', settings={'PREFER_DAY_OF_MONTH': 'first'}) datetime.datetime(2015, 12, 1, 0, 0)

>>> parse(u'March') datetime.datetime(2015, 3, 16, 0, 0) >>> parse(u'March', settings={'PREFER_DATES_FROM': 'future'}) datetime.datetime(2016, 3, 16, 0, 0) >>> # parsing with preference set for 'past' >>> parse('August', settings={'PREFER_DATES_FROM': 'past'}) datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 15, 0, 0)

You can also ignore parsing incomplete dates altogether by setting STRICT_PARSING flag as follows:

>>> parse(u'December 2015', settings={'STRICT_PARSING': True}) None

For more on handling incomplete dates, please look at Settings.

You can extract dates from longer strings of text. They are returned as list of tuples with text chunk containing the date and parsed datetime object.

dateparser relies on following libraries in some ways:

• dateutil's module relativedelta for its freshness parser.
• jdatetime to convert Jalali dates to Gregorian.
• umalqurra to convert Hijri dates to Gregorian.
• tzlocal to reliably get local timezone.
• ruamel.yaml (optional) for operations on language files.

• Gregorian calendar.
• Persian Jalali calendar. For more information, refer to Persian Jalali Calendar.

• Hijri/Islamic Calendar. For more information, refer to Hijri Calendar.

  >>> from dateparser.calendars.jalali import JalaliCalendar >>> JalaliCalendar(u'جمعه سی ام اسفند ۱۳۸۷').get_date() {'date_obj': datetime.datetime(2009, 3, 20, 0, 0), 'period': 'day'}

  >>> from dateparser.calendars.hijri import HijriCalendar >>> HijriCalendar(u'17-01-1437 هـ 08:30 مساءً').get_date() {'date_obj': datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 30, 20, 30), 'period': 'day'}

Install using following command to use calendars.