SourcePro ISO 8601:2000 Parser Reference

Table of Contents

• Complete Date Formats
• Complete And Reduced Precision Time Formats
• Zone Designator Formats
• Complete Date-Time Formats
• Reduced Precision and Truncated Date Formats
• Truncated Time Formats
• Parsing for Implied Date and Time Components
• Avoiding Parsing Errors

The ISO 8601 specification provides a set of requirements for specifying date, time, and date-time values.

The ISO 8601:2000 parser can be used by RWDateTime for parsing date, time, and date-time values from strings compatible with the ISO 8601:2000 format specification. It is selected when the RWDateTime::iso8601_2000 enumerator is passed to the appropriate RWDateTime constructor.

The following sections outline valid date and time formats handled by the parser. Each example assumes that the local time zone is set to UTC.

Complete Date Formats

Date Format	Example	Result
YYYYMMDD	18650414	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYY-MM-DD	1865-04-14	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYYDDD	1865104	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYY-DDD	1865-104	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYYWwwD	1865W155	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYY-Www-D	1865-W15-5	1865-04-14T00:00:00Z

Complete And Reduced Precision Time Formats

Time Format	Example	Result
hhmmss	061512	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh:mm:ss	06:15:12	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hhmm	0615	1901-01-01T06:15:00Z
hh:mm	06:15	1901-01-01T06:15:00Z
hh	06	1901-01-01T06:00:00Z
hhmmss,ss	061512,00	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hhmmss.ss	061512.00	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh:mm:ss,ss	06:15:12,00	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh:mm:ss.ss	06:15:12.00	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hhmm,mm	0615,20	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hhmm.mm	0615.20	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh:mm,mm	06:15,20	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh:mm.mm	06:15.20	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh,hh	06,2533334	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z
hh.hh	06.2533334	1901-01-01T06:15:12Z

Note

All of the above time formats may be prefixed by a single T to indicate that a time value is being specified.

Some complete and reduced precision time formats cannot be reliably parsed as times when specified alone. See the section entitled Avoiding Parsing Errors below for more information on avoiding these issues.

Zone Designator Formats

Zone Format	Example	Result
Z	13:47:42Z	1901-01-01T13:47:42Z
+hh	13:47:42+01	1901-01-01T12:47:42Z
-hh	13:47:42-01	1901-01-01T14:47:42Z
+hhmm	13:47:42+0130	1901-01-01T12:17:42Z
-hhmm	13:47:42-0130	1901-01-01T15:17:42Z
+hh:mm	13:47:42+01:30	1901-01-01T12:17:42Z
-hh:mm	13:47:42-01:30	1901-01-01T15:17:42Z

Note

Negative offsets represent minutes west of UTC, and positive offsets represent minutes east of UTC.

Complete Date-Time Formats

The ISO 8601 specification identifies a complete date-time representation as a complete date representation, a single T separator, a complete or reduced precision time representation, and an optional zone designator. This parser will correctly handle all date-time representations that follow this format.

Reduced Precision and Truncated Date Formats

The ISO 8601 specification allows dates to be expressed in ways that do not indicate a specific point in time. RWDateTime is only able to represent a specific time point. As a result, the reduced precision and truncated date formats must be mapped onto specific time points. The rules used by this parser to do that mapping are covered in the Parsing for Implied Date and Time Components section below. The following table shows the expected result for a few example date values.

Date Format	Example	Result
YYYY-MM	1865-04	1865-04-01T00:00:00Z
YYYY	1865	1865-01-01T00:00:00Z
YY	18	1801-01-01T00:00:00Z
YYMMDD	130414	1913-04-14T00:00:00Z
YY-MM-DD	13-04-14	1913-04-14T00:00:00Z
-YYMM	-1304	1913-04-01T00:00:00Z
-YY-MM	-13-04	1913-04-01T00:00:00Z
-YY	-13	1913-01-01T00:00:00Z
-–MMDD	-–0414	1901-04-14T00:00:00Z
-–MM-DD	-–04-14	1901-04-14T00:00:00Z
-–MM	-–04	1901-04-01T00:00:00Z
-–-DD	-–-14	1901-01-14T00:00:00Z
YYDDD	13104	1913-04-14T00:00:00Z
YY-DDD	13-104	1913-04-14T00:00:00Z
-DDD	-104	1901-04-14T00:00:00Z
YYYYWww	1865W15	1865-04-10T00:00:00Z
YYYY-Www	1865-W15	1865-04-10T00:00:00Z
YYWwwD	13W155	1913-04-11T00:00:00Z
YY-Www-D	13-W15-5	1913-04-11T00:00:00Z
YYWww	13W15	1913-04-07T00:00:00Z
-YWwwD	-3W155	1903-04-10T00:00:00Z
-Y-Www-D	-3-W15-5	1903-04-10T00:00:00Z
-YWww	-3W15	1903-04-06T00:00:00Z
-Y-Www	-3-W15	1903-04-06T00:00:00Z
-WwwD	-W155	1901-04-12T00:00:00Z
-Www-D	-W15-5	1901-04-12T00:00:00Z
-Www	-W15	1901-04-08T00:00:00Z
-W-D	-W-5	1901-01-04T00:00:00Z

Truncated Time Formats

The ISO 8601 specification allows times to be expressed with one or more implied time components. The rules used by this parser to determine the value for any implied component are discussed in the Parsing for Implied Date and Time Components section below. The following table shows the expected result for a few example time values.

Time Format	Example	Result
-mmss	-1512	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm:ss	-15:12	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm	-15	1901-01-01T00:15:00Z
-–ss	-–12	1901-01-01T00:00:12Z
-mmss,ss	-1512,00	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mmss.ss	-1512.00	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm:ss,ss	-15:12,00	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm:ss.ss	-15:12.00	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm,mm	-15,20	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z
-mm.mm	-15.20	1901-01-01T00:15:12Z

Note

Some truncated time formats cannot be reliably parsed when specified alone. See the Avoiding Parsing Errors" section below for more information on avoiding these issues.

Parsing for Implied Date and Time Components

Any implied date or time component will always have its value taken from the epoch time value 1901-01-01T00:00:00. As an example, the input 2013-04 will be parsed as a date and the resulting date-time value will be 2013-04-01T00:00:00.

Avoiding Parsing Errors

Given an input string, the ISO 8601:2000 parser attempts to determine if the input is a date, time or a date-time. If an input could be interpreted as either a date or a time, an attempt will be made to parse the input as a date first. If that fails, an attempt will be made to parse the input as a time. This can make it difficult to use a few of the time formats. Those cases, and appropriate workarounds, are outlined below.

• hhmmss could be parsed as YYMMDD if the second digit pair could be interpreted as a month (01-12) and the third digit pair could be interpreted as a month day (01-31). Prefix the time string with T or use a zone designator to avoid the problem.
• -mmss could be parsed as -YYMM if the second digit pair could be interpreted as a month (01-12). Use a zone designator to avoid this issue.
• -–ss could be parsed as -–MM if the digit pair could be interpreted as a month (01-12). Use a zone designator to avoid this issue.
• -mm cannot be used with the current interface. It is always treated as -YY. Use a zone designator to avoid the problem.
• hhmm cannot be used with the current interface. It is always treated as YYYY. Prefix the time string with T or use a zone designator to avoid this issue.
• hh cannot be used with the current interface. It is always treated as YY. Prefix the time string with T or use a time zone designator to avoid the problem.