dateparser -- python parser for human readable dates

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

Documentation

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

Features

• Generic parsing of dates in over 200 languages 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'.
• Support for non-Gregorian calendar systems. See Supported Calendars.
• Extensive test coverage.

Usage

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

dateparser

Popular Formats

>>> 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)

Relative Dates

>>> 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)

Note

Testing above code might return different values for you depending on your environment's current date and time.

Note

Support for relative dates in future needs a lot of improvement, we look forward to community's contribution to get better on that part. See Contributing.

OOTB Language Based Date Order Preference

>>> # 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)

Note

Ordering is not locale based, that's why do not expect DMY order for UK/Australia English. You can specify date order in that case as follows usings Settings:

>>> parse('18-12-15 06:00', settings={'DATE_ORDER': 'DMY'}) datetime.datetime(2015, 12, 18, 6, 0)

For more on date order, please look at Settings.

Timezone and UTC Offset

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'>)

Note

In case, when timezone is present both in string and also specified using settings, string is parsed into tzaware representation and then converted to timezone specified in settings.

>>> parse('10:40 pm PKT', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'UTC'}) datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 12, 17, 40, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC'>)

>>> parse('20 mins ago EST', settings={'TIMEZONE': 'UTC'}) datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 12, 21, 16, 0, 885091, tzinfo=<StaticTzInfo 'UTC'>)

For more on timezones, please look at Settings.

Incomplete Dates

>>> 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.

Dependencies

dateparser relies on following libraries in some ways:

• dateutil's module relativedelta for its freshness parser.
• ruamel.yaml for reading language and configuration files.
• jdatetime to convert Jalali dates to Gregorian.
• umalqurra to convert Hijri dates to Gregorian.
• tzlocal to reliably get local timezone.

Supported languages and locales

Language	Locales
en zh	'en-001', 'en-150', 'en-AG', 'en-AI', 'en-AS', 'en-AT', 'en-AU', 'en-BB', 'en-BE', 'en-BI', 'en-BM', 'en-BS', 'en-BW', 'en-BZ', 'en-CA', 'en-CC', 'en-CH', 'en-CK', 'en-CM', 'en-CX', 'en-CY', 'en-DE', 'en-DG', 'en-DK', 'en-DM', 'en-ER', 'en-FI', 'en-FJ', 'en-FK', 'en-FM', 'en-GB', 'en-GD', 'en-GG', 'en-GH', 'en-GI', 'en-GM', 'en-GU', 'en-GY', 'en-HK', 'en-IE', 'en-IL', 'en-IM', 'en-IN', 'en-IO', 'en-JE', 'en-JM', 'en-KE', 'en-KI', 'en-KN', 'en-KY', 'en-LC', 'en-LR', 'en-LS', 'en-MG', 'en-MH', 'en-MO', 'en-MP', 'en-MS', 'en-MT', 'en-MU', 'en-MW', 'en-MY', 'en-NA', 'en-NF', 'en-NG', 'en-NL', 'en-NR', 'en-NU', 'en-NZ', 'en-PG', 'en-PH', 'en-PK', 'en-PN', 'en-PR', 'en-PW', 'en-RW', 'en-SB', 'en-SC', 'en-SD', 'en-SE', 'en-SG', 'en-SH', 'en-SI', 'en-SL', 'en-SS', 'en-SX', 'en-SZ', 'en-TC', 'en-TK', 'en-TO', 'en-TT', 'en-TV', 'en-TZ', 'en-UG', 'en-UM', 'en-VC', 'en-VG', 'en-VI', 'en-VU', 'en-WS', 'en-ZA', 'en-ZM', 'en-ZW'
zh-Hans hi	'zh-Hans-HK', 'zh-Hans-MO', 'zh-Hans-SG'
es	'es-419', 'es-AR', 'es-BO', 'es-BR', 'es-BZ', 'es-CL', 'es-CO', 'es-CR', 'es-CU', 'es-DO', 'es-EA', 'es-EC', 'es-GQ', 'es-GT', 'es-HN', 'es-IC', 'es-MX', 'es-NI', 'es-PA', 'es-PE', 'es-PH', 'es-PR', 'es-PY', 'es-SV', 'es-US', 'es-UY', 'es-VE'
ar	'ar-AE', 'ar-BH', 'ar-DJ', 'ar-DZ', 'ar-EG', 'ar-EH', 'ar-ER', 'ar-IL', 'ar-IQ', 'ar-JO', 'ar-KM', 'ar-KW', 'ar-LB', 'ar-LY', 'ar-MA', 'ar-MR', 'ar-OM', 'ar-PS', 'ar-QA', 'ar-SA', 'ar-SD', 'ar-SO', 'ar-SS', 'ar-SY', 'ar-TD', 'ar-TN', 'ar-YE'
bn	'bn-IN'
fr	'fr-BE', 'fr-BF', 'fr-BI', 'fr-BJ', 'fr-BL', 'fr-CA', 'fr-CD', 'fr-CF', 'fr-CG', 'fr-CH', 'fr-CI', 'fr-CM', 'fr-DJ', 'fr-DZ', 'fr-GA', 'fr-GF', 'fr-GN', 'fr-GP', 'fr-GQ', 'fr-HT', 'fr-KM', 'fr-LU', 'fr-MA', 'fr-MC', 'fr-MF', 'fr-MG', 'fr-ML', 'fr-MQ', 'fr-MR', 'fr-MU', 'fr-NC', 'fr-NE', 'fr-PF', 'fr-PM', 'fr-RE', 'fr-RW', 'fr-SC', 'fr-SN', 'fr-SY', 'fr-TD', 'fr-TG', 'fr-TN', 'fr-VU', 'fr-WF', 'fr-YT'
ur	'ur-IN'
pt	'pt-AO', 'pt-CH', 'pt-CV', 'pt-GQ', 'pt-GW', 'pt-LU', 'pt-MO', 'pt-MZ', 'pt-PT', 'pt-ST', 'pt-TL'
ru id	'ru-BY', 'ru-KG', 'ru-KZ', 'ru-MD', 'ru-UA'
sw pa-Arab	'sw-CD', 'sw-KE', 'sw-UG'
de ja te mr vi	'de-AT', 'de-BE', 'de-CH', 'de-IT', 'de-LI', 'de-LU'
fa	'fa-AF'
ta	'ta-LK', 'ta-MY', 'ta-SG'
tr yue	'tr-CY'
ko	'ko-KP'
it fil gu th kn ps	'it-CH', 'it-SM', 'it-VA'
zh-Hant ml or pl my pa pa-Guru am	'zh-Hant-HK', 'zh-Hant-MO'
om	'om-KE'
ha	'ha-GH', 'ha-NE'
nl uk uz uz-Latn	'nl-AW', 'nl-BE', 'nl-BQ', 'nl-CW', 'nl-SR', 'nl-SX'
yo	'yo-BJ'
ms ig	'ms-BN', 'ms-SG'
ro mg	'ro-MD'
ne as	'ne-IN'
so si km zu cs	'so-DJ', 'so-ET', 'so-KE'
sv hu	'sv-AX', 'sv-FI'
el sn kk rw	'el-CY'
ckb	'ckb-IR'
qu ak be	'qu-BO', 'qu-EC'
ti az az-Latn	'ti-ER'
af	'af-NA'
ca	'ca-AD', 'ca-FR', 'ca-IT'
sr-Latn ii he bg bm ki	'sr-Latn-BA', 'sr-Latn-ME', 'sr-Latn-XK'
gsw sr	'gsw-FR', 'gsw-LI'
sr-Cyrl ug zgh	'sr-Cyrl-BA', 'sr-Cyrl-ME', 'sr-Cyrl-XK'
ff rn	'ff-CM', 'ff-GN', 'ff-MR'
da	'da-GL'
hr	'hr-BA'
sq sk fi ks hy	'sq-MK', 'sq-XK'
nb luy lg lo bem kok luo uz-Cyrl ka	'nb-SJ'
ee mzn bs-Cyrl bs bs-Latn kln kam gl tzm dje kab	'ee-TG'
bo shi-Latn shi shi-Tfng mn	'bo-IN'
ln ky sg lt nyn guz cgg xog	'ln-AO', 'ln-CF', 'ln-CG'
lrc mer lu sl	'lrc-IQ'
teo brx nd mk uz-Arab	'teo-KE'
mas nn kde mfe lv seh mgh az-Cyrl ga eu yi ce et ksb bez ewo fy ebu nus ast asa ses	'mas-TZ'
os br cy kea lag sah mt vun rof jmc lb dav dyo dz nnh is khq bas naq mua ksh saq	'os-RU'
se dua rwk mgo sbp to jgo ksf	'se-FI', 'se-SE'
fo gd kl rm fur agq haw chr hsb wae nmg lkt twq dsb yav kw gv smn eo tl	'fo-DK'

Supported Calendars

• 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'}

Note

HijriCalendar has some limitations with Python 3.

Note

For Finnish language, please specify settings={'SKIP_TOKENS': []} to correctly parse freshness dates.

Install using following command to use calendars.

Tip

pip install dateparser[calendars]