curl_getdate(3)

NAME

       curl_getdate  -  Convert an date string to number of seconds since Jan-
       uary 1, 1970

SYNOPSIS

       #include <curl/curl.h>

       time_t curl_getdate(char *datestring, time_t *now );

DESCRIPTION

       This function returns the number of seconds since January 1st  1970  in
       the  UTC time zone, for the date and time that the datestring parameter
       specifies. The now parameter is not used, pass a NULL there.

       NOTE: This function was rewritten for the 7.12.2 release and this docu-
       mentation  covers  the functionality of the new one. The new one is not
       feature-complete with the old one, but most of the formats supported by
       the new one was supported by the old too.

PARSING DATES AND TIMES

       A  "date" is a string containing several items separated by whitespace.
       The order of the items is immaterial.  A date string may  contain  many
       flavors of items:

       calendar date items
               Can  be  specified several ways. Month names can only be three-
               letter english abbrivations, numbers can be  zero-prefixed  and
               the  year  may  use  2  or  4  digits.   Examples: 06 Nov 1994,
               06-Nov-94 and Nov-94 6.

       time of the day items
               This string specifies the time on a given day. You must specify
               it  with 6 digits with two colons: HH:MM:SS. To not include the
               time in a date string, will make the function assume  00:00:00.
               Example: 18:19:21.

       time zone items
               Specifies  international  time  zone.  There are a few acronyms
               supported, but in general you should instead use  the  specific
               relative  time  compared  to  UTC.  Supported  formats include:
               -1200, MST, +0100.

       day of the week items
               Specifies a day of the week. Days of the week  may  be  spelled
               out  in  full  (using english): `Sunday', `Monday', etc or they
               may be abbreviated to their first three letters. This  is  usu-
               ally not info that adds anything.

       pure numbers
               If  a decimal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY is
               read as the year, MM as the month number and DD as the  day  of
               the month, for the specified calendar date.

EXAMPLES

       Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
       Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
       Sun Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
       06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
       Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37
       06-Nov-94 08:49:37
       1994 Nov 6 08:49:37
       GMT 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 Sunday
       94 6 Nov 08:49:37
       1994 Nov 6
       06-Nov-94
       Sun Nov 6 94
       1994.Nov.6
       Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT
       Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST
       Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 -0700
       Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200
       20040912 15:05:58 -0700
       20040911 +0200

STANDARDS

       This  parser  was  written  to handle date formats specified in RFC 822
       (including the update in RFC 1123) using time zone name  or  time  zone
       delta  and  RFC 850 (obsoleted by RFC 1036) and ANSI C's asctime() for-
       mat. These formats are the only ones RFC2616 says HTTP applications may
       use.

RETURN VALUE

       This function returns -1 when it fails to parse the date string. Other-
       wise it returns the number of seconds as described.

       If the year is larger than 2037 on systems with  32  bit  time_t,  this
       function  will  return  0x7fffffff  (since that is the largest possible
       signed 32 bit number).

       Having a 64 bit time_t is not a guarantee that  dates  beyond  03:14:07
       UTC,  January  19, 2038 will work fine. On systems with a 64 bit time_t
       but with a crippled mktime(), curl_getdate will return -1 in this case.

REWRITE

       The  former  version  of  this function was built with yacc and was not
       only very large, it was also never quite understood and it wasn't  pos-
       sible  to  build  with non-GNU tools since only GNU Bison could make it
       thread-safe!

       The rewrite was done for 7.12.2. The new one is much  smaller  and  use
       simpler code.

libcurl 7.0                       12 Aug 2005                  curl_getdate(3)