Tutorial Date And Time

Date and Interval elements of AIML provide a comprehensive mechanism for viewing and manipulating time-based data

Date

The date tag provides a way to format the current date and time using a variety of ways. The formatting is controlled by the format attribute of the date tag. This is a string which takes a set of formatting options as defined by the Python Programming Language datetime module

In this first example, we use the date tag to return the name of the day. As defined by the formatting command "%A".

<aiml>
    <category>
        <pattern>DAY</pattern>
        <template>Today is
            <date format="%A"/>
        </template>
    </category>
</aiml>

When this is run in the bot, and you ask for the day, it returns the textual representation of the day as follows

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>>> DAY
Today is Thursday

Another way to use the date tag is to set the value of a variable and then act on the value of the variable. In the next example, we use the name of the month to return the name of the season

<aiml>
    <category>
        <pattern>SEASON</pattern>
        <template>
            <think>
                <set var="month">
                    <date format="%B"/>
                </set>
            </think>
            <condition var="month">
                <li><value>JANUARY</value>Winter
                </li>
                <li><value>FEBRUARY</value>Winter
                </li>
                <li><value>MARCH</value>Winter
                </li>
                <li><value>APRIL</value>Spring
                </li>
                <li><value>MAY</value>Spring
                </li>
                <li><value>JUNE</value>Summer
                </li>
                <li><value>JULY</value>Summer
                </li>
                <li><value>AUGUST</value>Summer
                </li>
                <li><value>SEPTEMBER</value>Fall
                </li>
                <li><value>OCTOBER</value>Fall
                </li>
                <li><value>NOVEMBER</value>Winter
                </li>
                <li><value>DECEMBER</value>Winter
                </li>
                <li>unknown</li>
            </condition>
        </template>
    </category>
</aiml>

Running this through the bot we can ask for the name of the season as follows

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>>> SEASON
Winter

Some additional useful uses are as follwos

<aiml>

    <category>
        <pattern>YEAR</pattern>
        <template>This is
            <date format="%Y" />
        </template>
    </category>

    <category>
        <pattern>MONTH</pattern>
        <template>This is
            <date format="%B" />
        </template>
    </category>

    <category>
        <pattern>TIME</pattern>
        <template>The time is
            <date format="%I:%M %p" />
        </template>
    </category>

    <category>
        <pattern>DATE</pattern>
        <template>Today is
            <date format="%B %d, %Y" />
        </template>
    </category>

    <category>
        <pattern>DAY PHASE</pattern>
        <template>
            <think>
                <set var="hour">
                    <date format="%I" />
                </set>
                <set var="ampm">
                    <date format="%p" />
                </set>
            </think>
            <condition>
                <li value="AM" var="ampm">Morning</li>
                <li>
                    <condition var="hour">
                        <li value="12">Noon</li>
                        <li value="1">Afternoon</li>
                        <li value="2">Afternoon</li>
                        <li value="3">Afternoon</li>
                        <li value="4">Afternoon</li>
                        <li value="5">Afternoon</li>
                        <li value="6">Afternoon</li>
                        <li>Night</li>
                    </condition>
                </li>
            </condition>
        </template>
    </category>

    <category>
        <pattern>DATE AND TIME</pattern>
        <template>The date and time is
            <date/>
        </template>
    </category>

</aiml>

Interval

Interval tag allows you to compute the time difference between 2 periods and then obtain the difference in a variety of formats, in the same way, that the date tag works.

<aiml>
    <category>
        <pattern>DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS</pattern>
        <template>
            <interval format="%B %d" >
                <style>days</style>
                <from>
                    <date format="%B %d" />
                </from>
                <to>December 25</to>
            </interval>
            days until Christmas.
        </template>
    </category>
</aiml>

We now have an incredibly useful grammar for asking the number of days until Christmas

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>>> Days until christmas
46 days until Christmas.

Or a more generic one

<aiml>
    <category>
        <pattern>DAYS UNTIL <set>month</set> <set>number</set> <set>number</set>
        </pattern>
        <template>
            <interval format="%B %d %Y" >
                <style>days</style>
                <from>
                    <date format="%B %d %Y" />
                </from>
                <to>
                    <star/>
                    <star index="2"/>
                    <star index="3"/>
                </to>
            </interval>
            days.
        </template>
    </category>
</aiml>

Running this in the bot and we can ask for the number of days between now and a future date

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>>> Days until December 24 2017
45 days.

For a more detailed description of how to use all the various formatting options see the Python Programming Language datetime module

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