bda.intellidatetime 1.0-beta1

bda.intellidatetime
===================

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.

TODO: complete the locale2pattern mappings, currently provided is 'en', 'de'
and the special locale iso, which is used as default.

Example:

the converter is designed as adapter accepting any object (the adapted object
is never used)

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

API doc:
========

convert(date, time=None, tzinfo=None, locale='en')
Convert the input to a datetime object.

The convert function accepts unicode or non-unicode 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 autocompleted 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
@param locale - a locale name, which is used to determine the date and
time patterns. There exists a special locale named
'iso', define the input in ISO format which further is
used as default.
@return datetime - datetime.datetime object
@raise DateTimeConversionError - if conversion failes

Licence:
========

* GNU General Public Licence Version 2 or later

Credits:
========

* Written by Robert Niederreiter <rnix@squarewave.at>
Squarewave Computing, Bluedynamics Alliance Austria