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lib::HTTP::Date

Section: User Contributed Perl Documentation (3)
Updated: libwww-perl-5.48
Index

NAME

HTTP::Date - date conversion routines

SYNOPSIS

 use HTTP::Date;

 $string = time2str($time);    # Format as GMT ASCII time $time = str2time($string);    # convert ASCII date to machine time

DESCRIPTION

This module provides functions that deal the date formats used by theHTTP protocol (and then some more). Only the first two functions,time2str() and str2time(), are exported by default.

time2str( [$time] )

The time2str() function converts a machine time (seconds since epoch)to a string. If the function is called without an argument, it willuse the current time.

The string returned is in the format preferred for the HTTP protocol.This is a fixed length subset of the format defined by RFC 1123,represented in Universal Time (GMT). An example of a time stampin this format is:

   Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT

str2time( $str [, $zone] )

The str2time() function converts a string to machine time. It returnsundef if the format of $str is unrecognized, or the time is outsidethe representable range. The time formats recognized are the same asfor parse_date().

The function also takes an optional second argument that specifies thedefault time zone to use when converting the date. This parameter isignored if the zone is found in the date string itself. If thisparameter is missing, and the date string format does not contain anyzone specification, then the local time zone is assumed.

If the zone is not ``GMT'' or numerical (like ``-0800'' or``+0100"), then the Time::Zone module must be installed in orderto get the date recognized.

parse_date( $str )

This function will try to parse a date string, and then return it as alist of numerical values followed by a (possible undefined) time zonespecifier; ($year, $month, $day, $hour, $min, $sec, $tz). The $yearreturned will not have the number 1900 subtracted from it and the$month numbers start with 1.

In scalar context the numbers are interpolated in a string of the``YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss TZ''-format and returned.

If the date is unrecognized, then the empty list is returned.

The function is able to parse the following formats:

 "Wed, 09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT"       -- HTTP format "Thu Feb  3 17:03:55 GMT 1994"        -- ctime(3) format "Thu Feb  3 00:00:00 1994",           -- ANSI C asctime() format "Tuesday, 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT"     -- old rfc850 HTTP format "Tuesday, 08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT"   -- broken rfc850 HTTP format

 "03/Feb/1994:17:03:55 -0700"   -- common logfile format "09 Feb 1994 22:23:32 GMT"     -- HTTP format (no weekday) "08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT"       -- rfc850 format (no weekday) "08-Feb-1994 14:15:29 GMT"     -- broken rfc850 format (no weekday)

 "1994-02-03 14:15:29 -0100"    -- ISO 8601 format "1994-02-03 14:15:29"          -- zone is optional "1994-02-03"                   -- only date "1994-02-03T14:15:29"          -- Use T as separator "19940203T141529Z"             -- ISO 8601 compact format "19940203"                     -- only date

 "08-Feb-94"         -- old rfc850 HTTP format    (no weekday, no time) "08-Feb-1994"       -- broken rfc850 HTTP format (no weekday, no time) "09 Feb 1994"       -- proposed new HTTP format  (no weekday, no time) "03/Feb/1994"       -- common logfile format     (no time, no offset)

 "Feb  3  1994"      -- Unix 'ls -l' format "Feb  3 17:03"      -- Unix 'ls -l' format

 "11-15-96  03:52PM" -- Windows 'dir' format

The parser ignores leading and trailing whitespace. It also allow theseconds to be missing and the month to be numerical in most formats.

If the year is missing, then we assume that the date is the firstmatching date before current month. If the year is given with only2 digits, then parse_date() will select the century that makes theyear closest to the current date.

time2iso( [$time] )

Same as time2str(), but returns a ``YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss''-formattedstring representing time in the local time zone.

time2isoz( [$time] )

Same as time2str(), but returns a ``YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ssZ''-formattedstring representing Universal Time.

COPYRIGHT

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/ormodify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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