Parse user entry of dates on the front end

[seancolsen]

Context

In the following places, we accept user-entry of date/datetime/time values:

• Cells, when saving values
• Filter conditions, when filtering the table page, or an exploration
• Inputs when searching via the record selector
• Inputs when saving a record on the Table Page
• Inputs, when setting a default value for a column

Current behavior

• In all the above contexts, the front end attempts to parse the user input into a structured value. If it succeeds, it sends an ISO-formatted string for that value. If it fails, it sends the raw user input. Sending the raw user input allows us to handle special values like "today" and "now" that postgres is able to understand. We don't want to parse those values into dates on the front end because we want to allow the user to set filter conditions that will change based on the current date (e.g. setting the default value for a date column to "today").

• This behavior is problematic because it produces this bug described in InvalidDatetimeFormat error when attempting to filter on a partially-entered date #1890.

  

Desired behavior

• The front end maintains a list of reserved "special" date values, so far only today, now, yesterday. If the user input matches a special value, then the front end sends that special value. Otherwise...

• The front end attempts to parse the user input into a structured value. If it succeeds, it sends an ISO-formatted string for that value. If it fails, then it displays a client-side error, allowing the user to fix the problem before submitting any API requests.

Additional considerations

• I noticed that for some formats (e.g. 1/1/2020) the Postgres parsing succeeds but our current parsing logic on the front end does not. When implementing this ticket, we'll need to improve the parsing logic on the front end to handle more cases like this and avoid UX regressions.

Previous discussion

• This started in InvalidDatetimeFormat error when attempting to filter on a partially-entered date #1890
• Then we chatted on Matrix
• We had a meeting where we formulated the plan above

[dikwickley]

@seancolsen I would like to work on this 😃