Key Features • How To Use • How it works • Common use cases • Operations • Roadmap
Have you ever tried to understand a date like 11-09, št? Is the št an abbreviation of a month or a weekday? Which of those numbers represent the month or the day? This library leverages on Good Ol' Fashioned AI to parse abbreviated, ambiguous, and incomplete dates in multiple languages.
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- Python support through a Python Bridge
- Language auto-detection
- Easily expandable into new languages (30 languages are currently supported)
- Support for multiple date formats
- Support for abbreviated weekdays
- Support for abbreviated months
- Support for ambiguous month/day numbers
The most straightforward way to parse dates is to use the abbreviated_dates:parse() predicate, that wraps around most of the functionality of the module. This example shows a basic usage of the library to parse the date: "11-09, št":
?- ['./prolog/demo.pl'], solutions('11-09, št').
╔═══════════════════════╤════════════╤════════════════╗
║ Date │ Language │ Country ║
╟───────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────╢
║ Saturday, 09 Nov 2024 │ Lithuanian │ Lithuania ║
║ Saturday, 11 Sep 2027 │ Lithuanian │ Latvia ║
║ Thursday, 11 Sep 2025 │ Slovak │ Czech Republic ║
║ Thursday, 11 Sep 2025 │ Slovak │ Slovakia ║
║ Thursday, 11 Sep 2025 │ Slovak │ Czech Republic ║
║ Thursday, 11 Sep 2025 │ Slovak │ Slovakia ║
╚═══════════════════════╧════════════╧════════════════╝
true.Click to see the demo code
:- use_module(library(abbreviated_dates)).
:- use_module(library(cli_table)).
solutions(Text):- % E.g. solutions('11-09, št').
Starting = date(2022,09,9),
findall([Date,Language,Country],format(Starting,Text,Date,Language,Country),Row),
cli_table(Row,[head(['Date','Language','Country'])]).
format(Starting, Text, DateText, Language, Country):-
parse(Starting, Text, [Date], _, Language, Country),
format_time(string(DateText), "%A, %d %b %Y", Date).To test the demo code shown above run this query in your SWI-Prolog shell:
pack_install(cli_table).The abbreviation "št" could stand for:
- Šeštadienis which means Saturday in Lithuanian
- Štvrtok which means in Thursday in Slovak
Lithuanian is spoken in Lithuania and in Latvia. Slovak is spoken in Slovakia but also by a minority in the Czech Republic. These countries use different date representations: Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovakia have the day written first because of the "little" date endianness format used as the standard in the country. Lithuania, on the other hand, uses the "big" date endianness format which means that the month is written first. The system factor in all these facts and is able to come with the right answers:
In the case of interpreting the abbreviation as a Saturday:
- 9 of November 2024
- 11 of September 2027
In the case of interpreting the abbreviation as a Thursday:
- 11 of September 2025
For further details have a look at the implementation. In addition, the unit tests might give an impression on how to use this library.
Consuming data from different sources:
- Scraping: extract dates from different places with several formats and languages
- IoT: consuming data coming from different sources with different date formats
- Tooling: consuming dates from different logs / sources
- Format transformations: when transforming dates coming from different files (PDF, CSV, etc.) to other formats (database, etc).
We are leveraging GNU Make to automate frequent actions. Please use the following command will show the available recipes to use for operating the local development environment:
make help
Click to see the available recipes
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| help | Print this help |
| synchronize | Synchronize the local repository: Switch to the main branch, fetch changes & delete merged branches |
| test | Run the test suite |
| bump | Increase the version number |
| release | Release recipe to be use from Github Actions |
| install | Install the latest library release or the one in the VERSION variable (Eg. make install VERSION=v.0.0.207) |
| requirements | Install the packages packs required for the development environment |
| publish | Publish the diagrams |
| workflow | Creates the Diagrams |
| clean | Remove debris |
- Multi-language Support
- Integrate with the Python Bridge
- Integrate with the Julian package
- Implement the Diagram Workflow in GitHub Actions
- Identify the Scope of formats being covered
- Add Coverage Metrics
- Add support for words as date separator (and, bis, hasta...)
- Search dates embedded in longer texts.
See the open issues for a full list of proposed features (and known issues).
The package can be reviewed in the Distribution Server
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE file for more information.