Chrono

A natural language date parser in Javascript.

INSTALLATION

Node.js

npm install chrono-node

Browser

<script src="https://raw.github.com/berryboy/chrono/master/chrono.min.js"></script>

USAGE

Basic

You can parse strings containing a natural language date using the chrono.parseDate or chrono.parse method.

> var chrono = require('chrono-node');

> chrono.parseDate('Today'); 
Thu Aug 23 2012 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT)

> chrono.parse('Today'); 
[ { start: 
     { year: 2012,
       month: 7,
       day: 23,
       hour: undefined,
       minute: undefined,
       second: undefined,
       date: [Function] },
    startDate: Thu Aug 23 2012 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    referenceDate: Thu Aug 23 2012 01:17:46 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    index: 0,
    text: 'Today',
    sentence: undefined } ]

Reference Date

Today's "Friday" is difference from last month's "Friday". The meaning of mentioned dates are depended on when they were mentioned. Chrono let you define the reference date using chrono.parse(text,ref) and chrono.parseDate(text,ref).

> chrono.parseDate('Friday', new Date(2012,7,23)); 
Fri Aug 24 2012 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT)

> chrono.parseDate('Friday', new Date(2012,7,1)); 
Fri Aug 03 2012 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT)

Text

Chrono is also designed to handle a long text. chrono.parse will return a array of every date mentioned in the input text. chrono.parseDate will return the first one.

> var text = 'October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs\'s family.[239] Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages.[240] Sunday, October 16, 2011'

> chrono.parse(text)
[ { start: 
     { year: 2011,
       month: 9,
       day: 7,
       hour: undefined,
       minute: undefined,
       second: undefined,
       date: [Function] },
    startDate: Fri Oct 07 2011 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    referenceDate: Thu Aug 23 2012 01:48:37 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    index: 0,
    text: 'October 7, 2011',
    sentence: undefined },
  { start: 
     { year: 2011,
       month: 9,
       day: 16,
       hour: undefined,
       minute: undefined,
       second: undefined,
       date: [Function] },
    startDate: Sun Oct 16 2011 12:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    referenceDate: Thu Aug 23 2012 01:48:37 GMT+0700 (ICT),
    index: 297,
    text: 'Sunday, October 16, 2011',
    sentence: undefined } ]

EXAMPLES

Chrono can parse a number of date and time formats. Following are examples of strings that can be parsed properly.

• yesterday
• today
• tomorrow
• thursday
• friday 13:00
• friday 1pm - saturday 5am
• next tuesday
• last night
• last friday at 20:00
• tomorrow at 6:45pm
• 12/1/2012
• 12 - 13 Jan 2012
• 12 Jan - 13 Feb 2012
• Jan 12 - Feb 13
• 2012-3-12