Overview

bda.intellidatetime provides a converter for date and time input to python datetime.datetime objects.

The input format is definded by a locale2pattern mapping and is provided by a seperate interface.

Currently provided locales are:

• en

• de

• fr

• es

• uk

• it

• cs

• and the special locale iso, which is used as default.

Example

Use the convert function:

>>> from bda.intellidatetime import convert
>>> convert('1.1.08', locale='de')
datetime.datetime(2008, 1, 1, 0, 0)

API

The signature of bda.intellidatetime.convert looks like so:

def convert(date, time=None, tzinfo=None, locale='iso'):
    """Convert the input to a datetime object.

    The convert function accepts strings and tries to parse out Date and
    Time information as follows:
      * First try to get the localized datetime pattern information
      * If no one is found, a default pattern is used.
      * Parse the input by the definitions of the localized datetime pattern
      * Create a datetime object and return it

    The 'intelligence' is defined by following behaviour:

    Date:
      * If only one value is found f.e. '1', this value is handled as the
        day value, for month and for year the current ones are used.
      * Respective, if two values are given, they are handled as day and
        month, year is auto completed with the current year.
      * 3 values are a complete date information, if year is a 2-character
        string, it is handled as year in the current century
      * as limiters are all non-numeric values accepted
      * date input can be done without limiters, therefor all characters
        must be numbers, and the string length must be either 2, 4, 6 or 8
        characters. 2 characters define the day, 4 characters the day and
        the month, 6 characters day, month and the year of the current
        century and 8 characters define a complete date.

    Time:
      * If time is None, time is set to 00:00
      * if time is a 2-character string, it is handled as the hour, minutes
        are defined as 00
      * time input can be done without a limiter, therefor time must be an
        all numeric 4-character string, the first 2 chars are handled as
        hour, the second 2 chars as minute.
      * as limiter are all non-numeric values accepted
      * seconds are never computed and are therefor ALWAYS handled as '00'

    Limiters can be any 1 or more character non numeric values. An input
    can look like ``  %_2008 1 abcde 5 ---`` and is still valid and with
    default locale converted to ``datetime.datetime(2008, 1, 5, 0, 0)``.

    If parsing of the input values is not possible or converting the parsed
    values to numeric values is not possible or the valid date and time
    range falls out of scope, a ``DateTimeConversionError`` is raised.

    @param date - a date as string
    @param time - a time as string
    @param tzinfo - a tzinfo object to be considered, defaults to None. If
                    given the date and time taken as in the given timezone.
                    If the timezone is DST-aware time will be normalized
                    for DST/non-DST.
    @param locale - a locale name, which is used to determine the date and
                    time patterns. There exists a special locale named
                    'iso', which is default and expects the input in ISO
                    format.
    @return datetime - datetime.datetime object
    @raise DateTimeConversionError - if conversion fails
    """

Licence

• Simplified BSD

2.0.0 (2026-10-31)

• Drop the Python 2 remnants: IS_PY2 and STRING_TYPES in bda.intellidatetime.converter, u'' prefixes and class X(object). Behaviour unchanged. [rnix]

• Use pytest as test runner. Move the tests to bda.intellidatetime.tests and test the tzinfo normalization. The tests no longer depend on the wording of the datetime error message, which changed in Python 3.14. [rnix]

• Sort the imports with ruff (one per line, from imports first, no sections) and format the code with ruff format (90 characters per line, single quotes). [rnix]

• Add Makefile (mxmake) with qa.ruff, qa.test and qa.coverage domains, pin the ruff configuration in pyproject.toml and add a GitHub Actions test workflow. [rnix]

• Move the changelog from README.rst to CHANGES.rst. [rnix]

• Refactor package layout to use pyproject.toml and implicit namespace packages. [rnix]

• Drop Python 2 support. Python >= 3.10 is required. [rnix]

1.4 (2022-12-05)

• Release wheel. [rnix]

1.3 (2018-07-16)

• Python 3 compatibility. [rnix]

• Convert doctests to unittests. [rnix]

1.2.2

• Package cleanup. [rnix, 2017-03-29]

1.2.1

• fix MANIFEST.in to include configure.zcml in release [jensens, 2013-09-23]

1.2

• Use zope.interface.implementer instead of zope.interface.implements. [rnix, 2012-05-18]

1.1

• Provide convenience convert function. [rnix, 2010-05-08]

• Change package structure. [rnix, 2010-05-08]

• Move tests into seperate file. [rnix, 2010-05-08]

• Change signature of converter. could now be registered as utility as well if desired. [rnix, 2010-05-08]

• Adapter pattern deprecated. [rnix, 2010-05-08]

1.0

• Make it work [rnix, jensens]