SYNOPSIS

        my $parser = Date::Extract::PERLANCAR->new();
        my $dt = $parser->extract($arbitrary_text)
            or die "No date found.";
        return $dt->ymd;

DESCRIPTION

    This is a temporary fork of Date::Extract (last updated at 0.06) to add
    features that I need. The features will eventually be merged into
    Date::Extract. Currently it adds:

      * Add 'combined' format

      * Recognize yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss in addition to yyyy-mm-dd

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::PERLANCAR

  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), "epoch" (return Unix
      timestamp), or "combined" (return hashref containing these keys
      "verbatim", "DateTime", "pos" [position of date string in the text]).

    time_zone

      Only relevant when 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::PERLANCAR object
    to call this method. Just Date::Extract::PERLANCAR->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

ORIGINAL 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.

ORIGINAL 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.

