pytimeparse2: time expression parser

This is a pytimeparse based project with the aim of optimizing functionality and providing stable support.

Copyright (c) 2023 Sergey Klyuykov <[email protected]>

Licensed under the MIT License (see source file pytimeparse2.py for details).

A small Python library to parse various kinds of time expressions, inspired by this StackOverflow question.

The single function pytimeparse2.parse defined in the library parses time expressions like the following:

• 32m
• 2h32m
• 3d2h32m
• 1w3d2h32m
• 1w 3d 2h 32m
• 1 w 3 d 2 h 32 m
• 4:13
• 4:13:02
• 4:13:02.266
• 2:04:13:02.266
• 2 days, 4:13:02 (uptime format)
• 2 days, 4:13:02.266
• 5hr34m56s
• 5 hours, 34 minutes, 56 seconds
• 5 hrs, 34 mins, 56 secs
• 2 days, 5 hours, 34 minutes, 56 seconds
• 1.2 m
• 1.2 min
• 1.2 mins
• 1.2 minute
• 1.2 minutes
• 172 hours
• 172 hr
• 172 h
• 172 hrs
• 172 hour
• 1.24 days
• 5 d
• 5 day
• 5 days
• 5.6 wk
• 5.6 week
• 5.6 weeks

It returns the time as a number of seconds (an integer value if possible, otherwise a floating-point number):

>>> from pytimeparse2 import parse
>>> parse('1.2 minutes')
72

For months and years, the library does not consider complications such as leap- years and leap-seconds. Instead, it assumes "30 days for a month" and "365 days for a year" as the basis for calculations with those units.

• 2 mo
• 2 months
• 3y
• 3 years
• 1y2mo3w4d5h6m7s8ms

For better capability with dates, use keyword as_timedelta=True which mark for function returns value as datetime.timedelta or dateutil.relitivedelta.relativedelta (if installed):

>>> from pytimeparse2 import parse
>>> parse('24h', as_timedelta=True)
relativedelta(days=+1)

You can also forced disable dateutil support by calling disable_dateutil() before parse(...). For returning support call enable_dateutil().

Notes

A number of seconds can be converted back into a string using the datetime module in the standard library, as noted in this other StackOverflow question:

>>> from pytimeparse2 import parse
>>> import datetime
>>> parse('1 day, 14:20:16')
138016
>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=138016))
'1 day, 14:20:16'

Future work

1. Speed up with Cython for some python versions.
2. Use github actions for testing and releasing.