Prerequisite
This article assumes you know how to use field formats to normalize and format your data in Parseur. Check out this article for more information.
Managing dates and times
Dates and times can take all kinds of shapes in your documents. Quite often, applications integrated with Parseur require date fields to be formatted in a specific way.
Parseur offers 3 types of date and time formats. They are rather self-explanatory:
Date format
The "Date" format will sanitize a field into a date.
If the field contains a date and a time, only the date information part will be kept.
Examples of dates recognized by Parseur:
12 Jan 2018
2018-1-2
Wed Jan 24th, 2018 1:58pm
01/12/2018: this date can either be the 12th of January or the 1st of December, depending on the locale and conventions. See the section below to tell Parseur how to disambiguate that situation.
Time format
The "Time" format will sanitize a field into a time.
If the field contains a date and a time, only the time information part will be kept.
Examples of times recognized by Parseur:
1:58 pm
13:58:23
12h36
Date and time format
The "Date and Time" format will sanitize a field into a datetime.
If the field contains no time information, 00:00:00 will be used for the time part.
Examples of datetimes recognized by Parseur:
Wed Jan 24th, 2018 1:58pm
12 Jan 2018 13:58:23
2018-01-24T05:18:44.841813+00:00
How to configure the date input format?
You can change your default date format preferences (in user preferences):
Click on your name in the navigation bar in the bottom left corner
Click on Account on the dropdown menu
Click on the Manage Account button or on the left menu
Scroll down to the Input formats section
Under Timezone, select the default time zone of your documents (most likely your time zone). Timezone is currently only used in date-related metadata fields and Getswift integration. Timezone here is used only if the timezone is not already present in the field, and if it's not overridden by the mailbox-level setting of the same name.
Under Date format in documents, tell Parseur how ambiguous dates should be treated (either month first, or day first)
Click on Update
Note: the "Day first" flag won't be observed for dates starting with the year i.e. 2020-07-06 will always be treated as July 6th, 2020, never as June 7th, 2020.
How to configure the date output format?
Now that you've told Parseur that some fields are dates, you can specify the exact output format you would like those dates to be formatted in. The resulting fields are formatted according to your user preferences.
To change your result output preferences:
Click on your name in the navigation bar in the bottom left corner
Click on Account on the dropdown menu
Click on the Manage Account button or on the left menu
Scroll down to the Output formats section
Change your result output preferences (see below the list of all available options)
Click on Update
List of available date formats
%a: Weekday as locale’s abbreviated name. Example: Mon%A: Weekday as locale’s full name. Example: Monday%w: Weekday as a decimal number, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday. Example: 1%d: Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 30%-d: Day of the month as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 30%b: Month as locale’s abbreviated name. Example: Sep%B: Month as locale’s full name. Example: September%m: Month as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 09%-m: Month as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 9%y: Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 13%Y: Year with century as a decimal number. Example: 2013%H: Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 07%-H: Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 7%I: Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 07%-I: Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 7%p: Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM. Example: AM%M: Minute as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 06%-M: Minute as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 6%S: Second as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 05%-S: Second as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 5%f: Microsecond as a decimal number, zero-padded on the left. Example: 000000%z: UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty string if the object is naive).%Z: Time zone name (empty string if the object is naive).%j: Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal number. Example: 273%-j: Day of the year as a decimal number. (Platform specific). Example: 273%U: Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a zero padded decimal number. All days in a new year preceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0. Example: 39%W: Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number. All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0. Example: 39%c: Locale’s appropriate date and time representation. Example: Mon Sep 30 07:06:05 2013%x: Locale’s appropriate date representation. Example: 09/30/13%X: Locale’s appropriate time representation. Example: 07:06:05%%: A literal '%' character. Example: %
Current Limitations when parsing dates
Output date and time format are only available at account level. We have an open feature request to customize date formats at mailbox level. Upvote that feature if you are interested in it, it will help us prioritize it.
Parseur can only parse numeric dates and dates in English. We have an open feature request to add support for dates in other languages. Upvote that feature if you are interested in it, it will help us prioritize it.