curl_getdate(3)           libcurl Manual          curl_getdate(3)



NAME
       curl_getdate - Convert an date string to number of seconds
       since January 1, 1970

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       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 documentation 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  sup-
       ported 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 usually 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() format. 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.  Otherwise  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 possible 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)