@area17/parse-numeric-date

parse-numeric-date

Micro library to parse numeric based date inputs - ~4kb minified/~1kb gzip

Mission Statement

Date entry is hard for users. Date pickers, including the native one, aren't always the best for accessibility.

In his article "Maybe You Don't Need a Date Picker", Adrian Roselli proposes using a text field which users enter a date into, some client side does some parsing and then some feedback is presented to the user.

It is fairly straight forward to parse a known date format and convert to ISO format. But, what if users don't enter the date in your known format?

Well, that is what parse-numeric-date attempts to solve.

Demo

https://area17.github.io/parse-numeric-date/

Usage

Firstly, install via npm:

$ npm install @area17/parse-numeric-date

Import into your JavaScript by:

import parseNumericDate from '@area17/parse-numeric-date'

And then in your JavaScript:

let isoString = parseNumericDate('29/12/25'); // 2025-12-29

If you want to have manual control over the locale:

let isoString = parseNumericDate('29/12/25', {
    locale: 'en-GB' // will favor d/m/y over m/d/y
}); // 2025-12-29

Examples of what parse-numeric-date can parse

• 2022-02-10
• 2022.02.10
• 2022/02/10
• 2022-2-10
• 2022-2-2
• 10 02 2022
• 1 12 2022
• 122922
• 090322
• 9322
• 29122022
• 010122
• 12/29/2022
• 12/29/22
• 01-01-2022
• 01-01-22
• 1-1-22
• 1-1-2022

Notes

This parse-numeric-date works with a big assumption:

Dates closer to today are better than dates years into the future

Date pickers for hotels, restaurants or events tend to be for things happening this year or next year. Dates of birth tend to happen from now to 100 years in the past. Retirement ages, mortgage completions tend to happen from now to 100 years in the future.

If the year difference is larger than 100, its probably useless. eg: a 29 in the string appear as 2922 rather than 29th of a month, 2022

Limitations

parse-numeric-date can't take natural input such as "December 12, 2022" - it is purely for parsing numeric inputs. Another assumption here is that such date entry, although natural in speech, isn't so natural to type - especially if the keyboard has been switched to a numeric keyboard on the users device.

If you want such parsing, perhaps you need:

• anyDateParser
• parse-dob
• chrono-node

Both are excellent, but can't parse numeric dates quite as fully as parse-numeric-date.

Comparison with other libraries

You can see a comparison between parse-numeric-date, anyDateParser, parse-dob and chrono-node over on Codepen: Date parse testing

parse-dob by @HenrikJoreteg was a great inspiration, we think that forking parse-dob and removing the previous date restriction would be very interesting.

Tests

Written using Jest with tests in /test/. To run:

$ npm run test

Future development

• Add support for other international date formats, such as Chinese and Persian dates.

Code of Conduct

AREA 17 is dedicated to building a welcoming, diverse, safe community. We expect everyone participating in the AREA 17 community to abide by our Code of Conduct. Please read it. Please follow it.

Changelog

0.0.6

• Fix trapping no parsed dates when determining highest score
• Add Jest tests: npm run test