Ruby International Date Parser

dates_international.rb

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
# Purpose:
# Extend the date parsing capabilities of Ruby to work with dates with international month names.
#
# Usage:
#
# Date.parse_international(date_string)
# DateTime.parse_international(date_string)
# date_string.to_international_date
#
# Notes:
# 1) This routine works by substituting your local month names (as defined by Date::MONTHNAMES) for the
#    international names when they occur in the date_string.
# 2) As distributed, this code works for French, German, Italian, and Spanish.  You must add the month 
#    names for any additional languages you wish to handle.
#

class Date
  def self.parse_international(string)
    parse(month_to_english(string))
  end

  private
  
  def self.make_hash(names)
    names.inject({}) {|result, name| result[name] = MONTHNAMES[result.count+1] ; result }      
  end

  MONTH_TRANSLATIONS = {}    
  MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/janvier février mars avril mai juin juillet août septembre octobre novembre décembre/) # French
  MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/Januar	Februar	März	April	Mai	Juni	Juli	August	September	Oktober	November	Dezember/)  # German
  MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/gennaio	febbraio	marzo	aprile	maggio	giugno	luglio	agosto	settembre	ottobre	novembre	dicembre/)  # Italian
  MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/enero	febrero	marzo	abril	mayo	junio	julio	agosto	septiembre	octubre	noviembre	diciembre/) # Spanish

  def self.month_to_english(string)
    month_from = string[/[^\s\d,]+/i]      # Search for a month name
    if month_from
      month_to = MONTH_TRANSLATIONS[month_from.downcase]      # Look up the translation
      return string.sub(month_from, month_to.to_s) if month_to
    end
    return string
  end
end

class DateTime
  def self.parse_international(string)
    parse(Date::month_to_english(string))
  end
end

class String
  def to_international_date
    Date::month_to_english(self).to_date
  end
end

Hi Jckrg,

Seems like you contribution is part of Ruby 2.3.0, find an issue in spanish parsing

At least for spanish this is solved changing line 37
From:

37: month_from = string[/[\s\d,]+/i]

To:

37: month_from = string[/[a-z]+/i]

Regards

@greutter: This file is NOT part of Ruby. See https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/13036. In addition, your fix will not work for French (it will fail for the accented month names février, août, and décembre).

Just to add to your code if you want! :)
MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/Janeiro Fevereiro Março Abril Maio Junho Julho Agosto Setembro Outubro Novembro Dezembro/) # Pt-BR

Newbie question: where would I place this? In /lib?