http::date(3)

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 the HTTP 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 (sec onds since epoch) to a string. If the function is
called without an argument, it will use 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 stamp in this format
is:

Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT

str2time( $str [, $zone] )

The str2time() function converts a string to machine time. It returns "undef" if the format of $str is
unrecognized, or the time is outside the representable
range. The time formats recognized are the same as
for parse_date().

The function also takes an optional second argument
that specifies the default time zone to use when con
verting the date. This parameter is ignored if the
zone is found in the date string itself. If this
parameter is missing, and the date string format does
not contain any zone 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 order to get the date recognized.

parse_date( $str )

This function will try to parse a date string, and
then return it as a list of numerical values followed
by a (possible undefined) time zone specifier; ($year,
$month, $day, $hour, $min, $sec, $tz). The $year
returned 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 asc

time() 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 for

mat
"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 for

mat (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 the seconds 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 first matching date before current month. If
the year is given with only 2 digits, then
parse_date() will select the century that makes the year closest to the current date.

time2iso( [$time] )

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

time2isoz( [$time] )

Same as time2str(), but returns a "YYYY-MM-DD
hh:mm:ssZ"-formatted string representing Universal
Time.

SEE ALSO

"time" in perlfunc, Time::Zone

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1995-1999, Gisle Aas

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

libwww-perl-5.65 2002-03-08 HTTP::Date(3)