c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $timeLimit =
   'xxx endTime=\"2016-12-28T23:59:59\" startTime=\"2016-09-30T00:00:00\" yyy';
 ;;
 my $got_start = my ($start) = $timeLimit =~ m/startTime=\"(.*?)\"/;
 my $got_end   = my ($end)   = $timeLimit =~ m/endTime=\"(.*?)\"/;
 ;;
 print qq{start [$start], end [$end]} if $got_start and $got_end;
"
start [2016-09-30T00:00:00], end [2016-12-28T23:59:59]