NAME

DateTime::Format::Natural - Create machine readable date/time with natural parsing logic

SYNOPSIS

 use DateTime::Format::Natural;

 $parser = DateTime::Format::Natural->new;

 $dt = $parser->parse_datetime($date_string);

DESCRIPTION

DateTime::Format::Natural takes a string with a human readable date/time and creates a machine readable one by applying natural parsing logic.

METHODS

new

Creates a new DateTime::Format::Natural object. Arguments to new() are options and not necessarily required.

 $parser = DateTime::Format::Natural->new(
           lang    => '[en|de]',
           format  => 'mm/dd/yy',
           daytime => { morning   => 06,
                        afternoon => 13,
                        evening   => 20,
                      },
 );

lang

Contains the language selected, currently limited to en (english) & de (german). Defaults to 'en'.

format

Specifies the format of numeric dates, defaults to 'd/m/y'.

daytime

A hash consisting of specific hours given for peculiar daytimes. Daytimes may be selectively changed.

parse_datetime

Creates a DateTime object from a human readable date/time string.

 $dt = $parser->parse_datetime($date_string);

 $dt = $parser->parse_datetime(
       string => $date_string,
       debug  => 1,
 );

string

The date string.

debug

Boolean value indicating debugging mode.

If debugging is enabled, each token that is analysed will be output to STDOUT with a trailing newline appended.

Returns a DateTime object.

EXAMPLES

See the modules DateTime::Format::Natural::Lang::* for a overview of valid input.

CREDITS

Thanks to Tatsuhiko Miyagawa for the initial inspiration. See Miyagawa's journal entry http://use.perl.org/~miyagawa/journal/31378 for more information.

Furthermore, thanks to (in order of appearance) who have contributed valuable suggestions & patches:

 Clayton L. Scott
 Dave Rolsky
 CPAN Author 'SEKIMURA'
 mike (pulsation)
 Mark Stosberg
 Tuomas Jormola

SEE ALSO

DateTime, Date::Calc, http://datetime.perl.org

AUTHOR

Steven Schubiger <schubiger@cpan.org>

LICENSE

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html