NAME

       Date::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 extract 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

       format
           Choose what format the extracted date(s) will be. The default is "DateTime", which
           will return DateTime object(s). Other option include "verbatim" (return the original
           text), or "epoch" (return Unix timestamp).

       time_zone
           Only relevant when C,format> is set to "DateTime".

           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 => dates
       Takes an arbitrary amount of text and extracts one or more dates from it. The return value
       will be zero or more dates, which by default are DateTime objects (but can be customized
       with the "format" argument). 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

       •   13 November 1986; 13 Nov 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.