1a.TH curl_getdate 3 "12 Aug 2005" "libcurl" "libcurl" curl_get‐
2date ‐ Convert a date string to number of seconds
3#include <curl/curl.h>
4time_t curl_getdate(char *datestring, time_t *now);
7January 1st 1970 00:00:00 in the UTC time zone, for the date and
8time that the datestring parameter specifies. The now parameter
9is not used, pass a NULL there.
10This function works with valid dates and does not always detect
12and reject wrong dates, such as February 30.
13A "date" is a string containing several items separated by white‐
15space. The order of the items is immaterial. A date string may
16contain many flavors of items: Can be specified several ways.
17Month names can only be three‐letter English abbreviations, num‐
18bers can be zero‐prefixed and the year may use 2 or 4 digits.
19Examples: 06 Nov 1994, 06‐Nov‐94 and Nov‐94 6. This string spec‐
20ifies the time on a given day. You must specify it with 6 digits
21with two colons: HH:MM:SS. To not include the time in a date
22string, will make the function assume 00:00:00. Example:
2318:19:21. Specifies international time zone. There are a few
24acronyms supported, but in general you should instead use the
25specific relative time compared to UTC. Supported formats in‐
26clude: ‐1200, MST, +0100. Specifies a day of the week. Days of
27the week may be spelled out in full (using English): ‘Sunday’,
28‘Monday’, etc or they may be abbreviated to their first three
29letters. This is usually not info that adds anything. If a deci‐
30mal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY is read as the
31year, MM as the month number and DD as the day of the month, for
32the specified calendar date.
33 time_t t;
34 t = curl_getdate("Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
35 t = curl_getdate("Sunday, 06‐Nov‐94 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
36 t = curl_getdate("Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994", NULL);
37 t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
38 t = curl_getdate("06‐Nov‐94 08:49:37 GMT", NULL);
39 t = curl_getdate("Nov 6 08:49:37 1994", NULL);
40 t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37", NULL);
41 t = curl_getdate("06‐Nov‐94 08:49:37", NULL);
42 t = curl_getdate("1994 Nov 6 08:49:37", NULL);
43 t = curl_getdate("GMT 08:49:37 06‐Nov‐94 Sunday", NULL);
44 t = curl_getdate("94 6 Nov 08:49:37", NULL);
45 t = curl_getdate("1994 Nov 6", NULL);
46 t = curl_getdate("06‐Nov‐94", NULL);
47 t = curl_getdate("Sun Nov 6 94", NULL);
48 t = curl_getdate("1994.Nov.6", NULL);
49 t = curl_getdate("Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT", NULL);
50 t = curl_getdate("Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET", NULL);
51 t = curl_getdate("06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST", NULL);
52 t = curl_getdate("Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 ‐0700", NULL);
53 t = curl_getdate("Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200", NULL);
54 t = curl_getdate("20040912 15:05:58 ‐0700", NULL);
55 t = curl_getdate("20040911 +0200", NULL);
56This parser handles date formats specified in RFC 822 (including
57the update in RFC 1123) using time zone name or time zone delta
58and RFC 850 (obsoleted by RFC 1036) and ANSI C’s asctime() for‐
59mat.
60These formats are the only ones RFC 7231 says HTTP applications
62may use. Always This function returns ‐1 when it fails to parse
63the date string. Otherwise it returns the number of seconds as
64described.
65On systems with a signed 32 bit time_t: if the year is larger
67than 2037 or less than 1903, this function will return ‐1.
68On systems with an unsigned 32 bit time_t: if the year is larger
70than 2106 or less than 1970, this function will return ‐1.
71On systems with 64 bit time_t: if the year is less than 1583,
73this function will return ‐1. (The Gregorian calendar was first
74introduced 1582 so no "real" dates in this way of doing dates ex‐
75isted before then.)
76