http://github.com/fizx/date_range/blob/459812f091a67ce8d4b0e...

Edit: Oh, and you should add a batch api. Request latency will easily trump parsing time.

But yeah, keep up the good work. I need to find/create a good open web/api/scraping/big-data meetup, preferably in SF, not the valley.

by design?

Got back an internal server error, and then got back 1pm tomorrow (even with the correct timezone).

It's really one of the best functions in the language. http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php

http://www.timeapi.org/pdt/first+firday+this+september

Gave me the third Wednesday of this September.

    %w[ rubygems sinatra chronic ].each {|x| require x}
    get "/utc/:time" do |time|; Chronic.parse(time).to_s; end

    $.get("/time-thingy/utc/" + whatever, function(date) { 
        alert("your UTC timestamp is " + date);
    });

http://www.datejs.com/

and stopped looking.

I assume someone would not have a good NL date parser for their environment, or won't be able to run it for some reason, or would simply prefer Chronic.

A lot of stuff that seems pointless ends up being useful, and vice versa. Assuming it's on Heroku's free plan, it costs nothing to run forever, so why not? If it helps 10 people, it already beat most web pages.

http://github.com/perezd/smart_month/tree/master

*Edit: Looks like a lot more is wrong with Chronic.

http://www.timeapi.org/pdt/seven%20hours%20before%20tomorrow

Plus this kind of "service" would be very fragile even the cases it would otherwise work...

Lol, even I would be thrown by that phrase... (a comma might help)

It's like SQL.

The problem with SQL isn't that simple SQL phrases are that different from normal language OR that complex SQL phrases break the rules of simple SQL phrases.

The problem with SQL is that humans beings have a lot of trouble understanding complex phrases that follow the most consistent possible rules followed by simple phrases...

So clever NLP often just out-clevers itself communicating with us... (remember SQL was originally intended to be a language usable by even non-programmers and ended up being a language that even many programmers feared ... though I have an unusual fondness for it).

"Meet with sam@gmail.com and jim@gmail.com next wednesday from 3pm to 9pm or first thursday of next month from 4pm to 8pm"

This creates an event that allows sam & jim to choose between these 2 dates. If presdo had an api to extract this information, I'd be on board!

While we're on the topic, anyone know of a clean Python library for converting local to UTC (that knows about DST)? For example, I'd like to specify a timezone, a local time, and a date, and get a UTC datetime.

In concrete terms, if I know that something is happening at 730pm four months from now in a city that's currently in EDT, suggestions on how to get a UTC for that?