changing date formats to standard format

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello monks,

I really hope that someone can help me here...

I have converted all data from an access database into xml for importing into another database. However, I have a problem in that the formats of the date field vary which this other database doesn't like.

The formats can be in the following:

DD/MM/YYYY
DD/MM/YY
D/M/YY
DD-Dec-YY - e.g. 02-Dec-03, the ones in the db are always in december

The dates appear next to these tags.

<create_ts>
<delta_ts>
<adr_when>

The format i would like them all to be in is:

YYYY-MM-DD 00:00:00

The time can be left as it is.

I dont have much experience of perl other than a module i did a long time ago at college, ive just been asked to get the info from one db to the other and from what i know, i thought perl is probably the best way to do this rather than manually go through 6000 problem reports!

Thanks in advance for your help, Martin Taylor.

Comment on changing date formats to standard format

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: changing date formats to standard format by Anonymous Monk on Nov 26, 2003 at 10:59 UTC
So you know no perl at all? Start with perlintro, Tutorials (especially How to RTFM, as it tells you where to find docs ...), perlcheat, perlmodlib.... You'll need one of the various XML:: modules to parse/modify the xml files (reccomended modules are XML::Twig, XML::Simple). You'll need one of the various Date modules to transform the dates (reccomended modules are DateTime::, Date::Manip, Date::Calc) If you want to know what perlmonks is all about, read the PerlMonks FAQ. Since this website is about learning, if the above reading material doesn't help you, try http://perlguru.com, as they have a section where you can ask people to write programs for you. Cheers, John Monk Anonymous	[reply]
Re: changing date formats to standard format by Paulster2 (Priest) on Nov 26, 2003 at 11:33 UTC
I highly recommend Date::Manip, as it is very powerful and can prove very useful when you need to work with dates. Do a perldoc on it from the command line and you should get enough information to keep you busy for an hour or two. (JK) Have fun and enjoy. Paulster2	[reply]