Ubuntu Manpage: curl_getdate - Convert a date string to number of seconds

Provided by: libcurl4-doc_8.5.0-2ubuntu10.5_all

NAME

       curl_getdate - Convert a date string to number of seconds

SYNOPSIS

       #include <curl/curl.h>

       time_t curl_getdate(const char *datestring, const time_t *now);

DESCRIPTION

       curl_getdate(3)  returns  the number of seconds since the Epoch, January 1st 1970 00:00:00
       in the UTC time zone, for the date and time that the datestring parameter  specifies.  The
       now parameter is not used, pass a NULL there.

       This  function  works  with valid dates and does not always detect and reject wrong dates,
       such as February 30.

PARSING DATES AND TIMES

A "date" is a string containing several items separated by whitespace. The order of the
items is immaterial. A date string may contain many flavors of items:

calendar date items
Can be specified several ways. Month names can only be three-letter English
abbreviations, numbers can be zero-prefixed and the year may use 2 or 4 digits.
Examples: 06 Nov 1994, 06-Nov-94 and Nov-94 6.

time of the day items
This string specifies the time on a given day. You must specify it with 6 digits
with two colons: HH:MM:SS. If there is no time given in a provided date string,
00:00:00 is assumed. Example: 18:19:21.

time zone items
Specifies international time zone. There are a few acronyms supported, but in
general you should instead use the specific relative time compared to UTC.
Supported formats include: -1200, MST, +0100.

day of the week items
Specifies a day of the week. Days of the week may be spelled out in full (using
English): `Sunday', `Monday', etc or they may be abbreviated to their first three
letters. This is usually not info that adds anything.

pure numbers
If a decimal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY is read as the year,
MM as the month number and DD as the day of the month, for the specified calendar
date.

EXAMPLE

       int main(void)
       {
         time_t t;
         t = curl_getdate("Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sun Nov  6 08:49:37 1994", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Nov  6 08:49:37 1994", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06-Nov-94 08:49:37", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("1994 Nov 6 08:49:37", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("GMT 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 Sunday", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("94 6 Nov 08:49:37", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("1994 Nov 6", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06-Nov-94", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sun Nov 6 94", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("1994.Nov.6", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 -0700", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("20040912 15:05:58 -0700", NULL);
         t = curl_getdate("20040911 +0200", NULL);
       }

STANDARDS

       This  parser  handles date formats specified in RFC 822 (including the update in RFC 1123)
       using time zone name or time zone delta and RFC 850 (obsoleted by RFC 1036) and  ANSI  C's
       asctime() format.

       These formats are the only ones RFC 7231 says HTTP applications may use.

AVAILABILITY

       Always

RETURN VALUE

       This  function returns -1 when it fails to parse the date string. Otherwise it returns the
       number of seconds as described.

       On systems with a signed 32 bit time_t: if the year is larger than 2037 or less than 1903,
       this function returns -1.

       On  systems  with  an unsigned 32 bit time_t: if the year is larger than 2106 or less than
       1970, this function returns -1.

       On systems with 64 bit time_t: if the year is less than 1583, this  function  returns  -1.
       (The  Gregorian calendar was first introduced 1582 so no "real" dates in this way of doing
       dates existed before then.)