Python module to extract probable dates from strings?

Question

I\'m looking for a Python module that would take an arbitrary block of text, search it for something that looks like a date string, and build a DateTime object out of it. Somet

Answer 1

Why no give parsedatetime a try?

Answer 2

The nearest equivalent is probably the dateutil module. Usage is:

>>> from dateutil.parser import parse
>>> parse("Wed, Nov 12")
datetime.datetime(2008, 11, 12, 0, 0)

Using the fuzzy parameter should ignore extraneous text. ie

>>> parse("the date was the 1st of December 2006 2:30pm", fuzzy=True)
datetime.datetime(2006, 12, 1, 14, 30)