dateutil parser breaks search for dates provided in ISO 8601 format by adding timezone offset

[torimcd]

Searching with dates in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ) fails due to the dateutil parser adding the timezone offset before sending to the CMR query. The CMR query then fails because the date string is no longer matches the ISO 8601 format that the date was originally in.

Example:

#!/usr/bin/env python 

import earthaccess

COLLECTION_SHORTNAME = 'SPURS2_ARGO'
START_DATE = '2019-03-10T00:00:00Z'
END_DATE = '2019-03-11T23:59:59Z'

auth = earthaccess.login()

cmr_search = earthaccess.DataGranules(auth). \
        short_name(COLLECTION_SHORTNAME).temporal(START_DATE, END_DATE)

results = cmr_search.get()

Fails with the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cmr/queries.py", line 357, in convert_to_string
    return date.strftime(iso_8601)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'strftime'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/projects/testearthaccess.py", line 12, in <module>
    short_name(COLLECTION_SHORTNAME).temporal(START_DATE, END_DATE)
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/earthaccess/search.py", line 611, in temporal
    super().temporal(parsed_from, parsed_to, exclude_boundary)
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cmr/queries.py", line 368, in temporal
    date_from = convert_to_string(date_from)
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/lib/python3.11/site-packages/cmr/queries.py", line 361, in convert_to_string
    datetime.strptime(date, iso_8601)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/_strptime.py", line 568, in _strptime_datetime
    tt, fraction, gmtoff_fraction = _strptime(data_string, format)
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/_strptime.py", line 349, in _strptime
    raise ValueError("time data %r does not match format %r" %
ValueError: time data '2019-03-10T00:00:00+00:00Z' does not match format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ'

[jhkennedy]

It looks like earthaccess always adds a Z to datestrings, irrespective of whether the datetime that's being formatted has a timezone specified or not:
https://github.com/nsidc/earthaccess/blob/main/earthaccess/search.py#L276

This really should do something like:

      if date_from.tzinfo:
          # eg: '2015-09-25T23:14:42.588601+00:00'
          return date_from.isoformat()
      else:
          # No timezone present - assume UTC.
          # eg: '2015-09-25T23:14:42.588601Z'
          return date_from.isoformat() + 'Z'

Which would be best handled in a time formatting helper function.

But looking at that stacktrace, the cmr package initially tries to convert a datetime object to a string, and if that fails, ensures the string is formatted correctly.

I think earthaccess could just pass datetimes to cmr directly...

[betolink]

I like what you're suggesting @jhkennedy! and I'm not sure if this is related to #190

[chuckwondo]

Fixed by #546