# String to date/time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [May 11, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238 "2006-05-11T14:50:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/65b543/32.png) [@isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/isaacrtree)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238/1 "2006-05-11T14:50:04Z")
Hey All, Anyone know of a library for parsing “human” dates, like “this friday” or “2 days ago”? I used to use strtotime in php, but starting from here; [http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/PhpStrtotime](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/PhpStrtotime) and doing lots of googling, I haven’t been able to find anything similar for ruby. I know of javascript solutions to this, but I’d need to do this processing on the server. Thanks! - Isaac ---
**Author:** ![isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/65b543/32.png) [@isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/isaacrtree)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238/2 "2006-05-11T20:02:39Z")
> Anyone know of a library for parsing “human” dates, like “this friday” > or “2 days ago”? I used to use strtotime in php, but starting from > here; Have not used it myself, but… [http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/String/Conversions.html](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/String/Conversions.html) -philip ---
**Author:** ![isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/65b543/32.png) [@isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/isaacrtree)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 10:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238/3 "2006-05-11T22:19:17Z")
On 5/11/06, Philip H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > Anyone know of a library for parsing “human” dates, like “this friday” > > or “2 days ago”? I used to use strtotime in php, but starting from > > here; > > Have not used it myself, but… > > [http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/String/Conversions.html](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/String/Conversions.html) Philip, thanks for the reference. Unfortunately those methods use ParseDate.parsedate, which is good for converting formatted date/times that are strings like “Sat May 14 19:28:13 IST 2005”, but it doesn’t understand common language formats, like “this friday” or “today”. - Isaac ---
**Author:** ![isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/65b543/32.png) [@isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/isaacrtree)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 3:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238/4 "2006-05-12T03:26:28Z")
My validates\_date\_time plugin understands common formats like: 1 Jan 06 2006-01-01 1 January 2006 1/1/06 And could easily be extended to parse strings such as ‘today’, ‘this friday’ etc… by extending the parsing a bit. Have a go and send me a patch if you want: [http://svn.viney.net.nz/things/rails/plugins/validates\_date\_time](http://svn.viney.net.nz/things/rails/plugins/validates_date_time) The problem with the String#to\_date and String#to\_time is that they are too lenient and often guess wrongly given ambiguous input. -Jonathan. ---
**Author:** ![isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/65b543/32.png) [@isaacrtree](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/isaacrtree)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/string-to-date-time/60238/5 "2006-05-11T22:29:03Z")
Sounds like a great opportunity for a plugin.