Parsing rfc1123 timestamps

[fisxoj]

I keep having to reach for another library to parse these, and then convert them to local time timestamps. I'd much rather just include the one library. Additionally, it's confusing that parse-timestring and parse-rfc3399-timestring do essentially the same thing. I originally thought that parse-timestring was the more generic function that would handle any timestring the library knew about.

Maybe, someday, I'll take a stab at a PR, but time is complicated and so I'm going to leave this here until that day.

[Ambrevar]

Agreed! Any news on that?

[jonatack]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the reported issue here, but I use the local-time library to convert from timestamps to rfc1123 strings. See these locations:

~/quicklisp/local-projects/local-time (master)$ git grep rfc1123

doc/local-time.texinfo:693:@itindex format-rfc1123-timestring
doc/local-time.texinfo:694:@defun format-rfc1123-timestring (destination timestamp &key (timezone *default-timezone*))
src/local-time.lisp:67:                 format-rfc1123-timestring to-rfc1123-timestring)
src/local-time.lisp:1805:(defun format-rfc1123-timestring (destination timestamp &key
src/local-time.lisp:1811:(defun to-rfc1123-timestring (timestamp)
src/local-time.lisp:1812:  (format-rfc1123-timestring nil timestamp))
src/package.lisp:45:           #:format-rfc1123-timestring
src/package.lisp:46:           #:to-rfc1123-timestring

You can also create custom versions:

(defparameter *custom-rfc1123*
  '(:short-weekday ", " (:day 2 #\space) #\space :short-month #\space
    :short-year #\space (:hour 2) #\: (:min 2) #\: (:sec 2) #\space :gmt-offset-hhmm)
  "Define a custom RFC1123 time format with a 2-digit year instead
   of 4 digits and a day padded with #\SPACE rather than #\0.")

(defun unix-to-custom-rfc1123 (unix-time)
  "Convert Unix Time to a custom RFC1123 format timestamp."
  (format-timestring nil (unix-to-timestamp unix-time)
                     :format *custom-rfc1123* :timezone +utc-zone+))

[fisxoj]

@jonatack, I think all of your comment is about formatting timestamps, but what I'm looking for is parsing from strings to the timestamp class.

Let me know if I misunderstood!

[jonatack]

@fisxoj Apologies, you're right, I misunderstood.