ISO 8601: Delphi way to convert XML date and time to TDateTime and back (via: Stack Overflow)
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/07/19
Recently I needed a way of concerting back and forth ISO 8601 DateTime values used in XML from Delphi.
Thoug the Delphi DateUtils unit has some ISO 8601 features for calculating week numbers, you actually need to the XSBuiltIns unit for converting back and forth to ISO 8601 text representation of a DateTime.
I remembered answering the related In Delphi is there a function to convert XML date and time to TDateTime question on StackOverflow a while ago (and forgot that this was back in 2009 <g>).
ISO 8601 dates can either include a time-zone, or be in UTC, which is not part of that answer. So lets elaborate on that answer a bit now:
UTC times in ISO 8601 format end in a Z time zone designator like this:
<Created>2011-06-29T17:01:45.505Z</Created>
The Z UTC indicator is basically a shortcut for a timezone offset of +00:00 or -00:00, effectively being a zero (or zulu) timezone.
Nonzero timezones start with an optional + or -, followed by the hours and minutes offset from UTC, for instance +01:00 for the Central European Time zone.
<Created>2011-06-29T17:01:45.505+01:00</Created>
When you want historical time zones, then you need the Delphi TZDB interface to the historical TZ database.
To do the timezone calculations, I used the TimeZoneBias function from Indy, which is either in the IdGlobal unit (Indy <= version 9) or the IdGlobalProtocols unit (Indy 10 and up).
Conversion is done by using the TXSDateTime (that like all the XS conversion classes descends from TRemotableXS in the InvokeRegistry unit).
Most of the classes descending from TRemotableXS contain two methods: NativeToXS and XSToNative doing the underlying conversions.
Since I didn’t need the historical reference in the TZDB, this is the code that I came up with:
unit Iso8601Unit;
interface
type
TIso8601 = class(TObject)
public
class function DateTimeFromIso8601(const Value: string): TDateTime; static;
class function UtcDateTimeToIso8601(const Value: TDateTime): string; static;
class function DateTimeToIso8601(const Value: TDateTime): string; static;
class function UtcNow: TDateTime; static;
class function ToUtc(const Value: TDateTime): TDateTime; static;
class function FromUtc(const Value: TDateTime): TDateTime; static;
end;
implementation
uses
IdGlobalProtocols, {IdGlobal for Index SysUtils,
XSBuiltIns;
class function TIso8601.DateTimeFromIso8601(const Value: string): TDateTime;
begin
with TXSDateTime.Create() do
try
XSToNative(value); // convert from WideString
Result := AsDateTime; // convert to TDateTime finally
finally
Free();
end;
end;
class function TIso8601.UtcDateTimeToIso8601(const Value: TDateTime): string;
begin
with TXSDateTime.Create() do
try
AsUTCDateTime := Value;
Result := NativeToXS; // convert to WideString
finally
Free();
end;
end;
class function TIso8601.DateTimeToIso8601(const Value: TDateTime): string;
begin
with TXSDateTime.Create() do
try
AsDateTime := Value; // convert from TDateTime
Result := NativeToXS; // convert to WideString
finally
Free();
end;
end;
class function TIso8601.UtcNow: TDateTime;
begin
Result := ToUtc(Now);
end;
class function TIso8601.ToUtc(const Value: TDateTime): TDateTime;
var
Bias: TDateTime;
begin
Bias := TimeZoneBias;
Result := Value + TimeZoneBias;
end;
class function TIso8601.FromUtc(const Value: TDateTime): TDateTime;
var
Bias: TDateTime;
begin
Bias := TimeZoneBias;
Result := Value - TimeZoneBias;
end;
end.
–jeroen
via In Delphi is there a function to convert XML date and time to TDateTime – Stack Overflow.
Henri Gourvest said
weeks: 2011-W28-5T14:40:05Z
hour only: T15:23:56,999
day of the year: 1997-206
optional separators: 20110715T144005Z
partial date: 2004-07
is not able to detect automatically utc time
etc ……
I am sorry but xsBuiltIns have not a real ISO8601 date parser.
there is nothing to fix but everything to write.
jpluimers said
Thanks for those!
How do you handle partial date or partial time? The built-in TDateTime does not accommodate for portions of date and time being zero. I wonder how you handle that.
–jeroen
Henri Gourvest said
For partial date I consider the day is 1,
For partial time I consider missed hour, minute, second or ms to be 0.
Henri Gourvest said
funny I have also written my own parser in superobject
http://code.google.com/p/superobject/source/browse/trunk/superobject.pas#817
jpluimers said
No need to, it has been built-in for years ;-)
Henri Gourvest said
the codegear parser only implement a very little subset of ISO8601 dates.
for example separators are optionnals
jpluimers said
Now that is interesting; do you have a set of dates that doesn’t work with the Delphi xsBuiltIns unit but does work with yours? I’ll be happy to QC them.