C library to parse approximate dates

Question

I'm looking for a plain C counterpart for date.js date.parse().

That is, something that understands "week ago" or "yesterday" as input. English-only is OK.

Note: a library should not be licensed under GPL, so Git's date.c or parser for GNU date -d wouldn't do. BTW, if you wonder why wouldn't I just sit down and code this, go and look at the source of mentioned libraries...

Answer 1

The following solution is not exactly what you've asked for but I hope that despite not being a plain C answer it will cover your needs. Reinventing the wheel isn't a way to go so let's use date.js in C by running it with SpiderMonkey, the Mozilla JavaScript engine.

Here's how I did it. I've begun with downloading date.js and translating it into a const char* named code defined in date.js.h.

( \
  echo 'const char *code =' ; \
  curl https://datejs.googlecode.com/files/date.js | \
    sed -e 's/\\/\\\\/g; s/"/\\"/g; s/^/"/; s/\r\?$/\\n"/'; \
  echo ';' \
) > date.js.h

Then I took the JSAPI's Hello, World! as a starting point.

#include "jsapi.h"
#include "date.js.h"

static JSClass global_class = { "global", JSCLASS_GLOBAL_FLAGS,
  JS_PropertyStub, JS_PropertyStub, JS_PropertyStub, JS_StrictPropertyStub,
  JS_EnumerateStub, JS_ResolveStub, JS_ConvertStub, JS_FinalizeStub,
  JSCLASS_NO_OPTIONAL_MEMBERS };

void reportError(JSContext *cx, const char *message, JSErrorReport *report) {
  fprintf(stderr, "%s:%u:%s\n",
      report->filename ? report->filename : "<no filename>",
      (unsigned int) report->lineno, message);
}

int main(int argc, const char *argv[]) {
  JSRuntime *rt;
  JSContext *cx;
  JSObject *global;
  rt = JS_NewRuntime(8L * 1024L * 1024L);
  if (rt == NULL) return 1;
  cx = JS_NewContext(rt, 8192);
  if (cx == NULL) return 1;
  JS_SetOptions(cx, JSOPTION_VAROBJFIX | JSOPTION_JIT | JSOPTION_METHODJIT);
  JS_SetVersion(cx, JSVERSION_LATEST);
  JS_SetErrorReporter(cx, reportError);
  global = JS_NewCompartmentAndGlobalObject(cx, &global_class, NULL);
  if (global == NULL) return 1;
  if (!JS_InitStandardClasses(cx, global)) return 1;

  /* Here's where the interesting stuff is starting to take place.
   * Begin by evaluating sources of date.js */

  jsval out;
  if (!JS_EvaluateScript(cx, global, code, strlen(code), "code", 1, &out))
    return 1;

  /* Now create a call to Date.parse and evaluate it. The return value should
   * be a timestamp of a given date. If no errors occur convert the timestamp
   * to a double and print it. */

  const int buflen = 1024;
  char parse[buflen + 1];
  snprintf(parse, buflen, "Date.parse(\"%s\").getTime();", argv[1]);

  if (!JS_EvaluateScript(cx, global, parse, strlen(parse), "parse", 1, &out))
    return 1;

  double val;
  JS_ValueToNumber(cx, out, &val);
  printf("%i\n", (int) (val / 1000));

  /* Finally, clean everything up. */

  JS_DestroyContext(cx);
  JS_DestroyRuntime(rt);
  JS_ShutDown();
  return 0;
}

Here's how it works in practice.

$ time ./parse "week ago"
1331938800
0.01user 0.00system 0:00.02elapsed 92%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 6168maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+1651minor)pagefaults 0swaps
$ time ./parse yesterday
1332457200
0.01user 0.00system 0:00.02elapsed 84%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 6168maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+1653minor)pagefaults 0swaps

As you can see it's quite fast and you could significantly increase its performance by reusing the initially created context for all subsequent calls to Date.parse.

Speaking of licensing issues, date.js is available under terms of MIT and SpiderMonkey is available under MPL 1.1, GPL 2.0 or LGPL 2.1. Linking it dynamically satisfies the non-GPL requirement.

TL;DR: git clone https://gist.github.com/2180739.git && cd 2180739 && make && ./parse yesterday