Chronic

Like Chronic, but for Elixir.

Usage

Add it as a dependency to your project:

defp deps do
  [
    {:chronic, "~> 2.0.2"},
  ]
end

Then you can use it wherever you wish:

{ :ok, time, offset } = Chronic.parse("tuesday 9am")

The time returned is a Calendar.NaiveDateTime from the calendar package. The offset returned is a time zone offset.

If Chronic encounters a format it doesn't recognise, it will return an error tuple:

{ :error, :unknown_format } = Chronic.parse("definitely not a known format, no siree")

If Calendar.NaiveDateTime doesn't know what you mean (i.e. if you ask for a date such as "January 32nd"), then you'll see this error instead:

{:error, :invalid_datetime} = Chronic.parse("January 32nd")

If you're not sure what you're going to get back, use a case:

input = "some user input goes here"
case Chronic.parse(input) do
  { :ok, time, offset } ->
    # do something with time + offset
  { :error, :unknown_format } ->
    # present a good error message to the user
end