On 16 May 2005 13:59:31 -0700, "Thomas W" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I'm developing a web-application where the user sometimes has to enter >dates in plain text, allthough a format may be provided to give clues. >On the server side this piece of text has to be parsed into a datetime >python-object. Does anybody have any pointers on this? > >Besides the actual parsing, my main concern is the different locale >date formats and how to be able to parse those strange us-like >"month/day/year" compared to the clever and intuitive european-style >"day/month/year" etc. <rant> Well I'm from a locale that uses the dd/mm/yyyy style and I think it's only marginally less stupid than the mm/dd/yyyy style. </rant> How much intuition is required to determine in an international context what was meant by 01/12/2004? First of December or 12th of January? The consequences of misinterpretation can be enormous. If this application is being deployed from a central server where the users can be worldwide, you have two options: (a) try to work out somehow what the user's locale is, and then work with dates in the legacy format "appropriate" to the locale. (b) Use the considerably-less-stupid ISO 8601 standard format yyyy-mm-dd (e.g. 2004-12-01) -- throughout your web-application, not just in your data entry. Having said all of that, [bottom-up question] how are you handling locale differences in language, script, currency symbol, decimal "point", thousands separator, postal address formats, surname / given-name order, etc etc etc? [top-down question] What *is* your target audience? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
