GSoC 2017 @ dateparser

As I mentioned in the last blog post, I have been working to modify the codebase so that dateparser could use new data to parse date strings. Most of the new data for date translation is similar to previous data used for translation, the only major difference is in dealing with relative type date strings. The previous data used translations for ago and in to translate relative type date strings like "10 years ago",  "15 hours 10 minutes ago", "in 10 minutes and 8 seconds". But the data retrieved from unicode CLDR contains translation for complete date strings so that they translate directly to formats like "** year ago" or "in ** month" which can be used further for parsing. Initially I thought direct translations like these would work but then I realised that many relative dates are not covered in these translations. These include dates that contains more than one date fields, like "1 year 3 months ago" and dates that includ...

There has been some time since I last wrote and I have been working on my project. As I was free during the GSoC bonding period, I started working on my project early so as to have a head start. I started working on scripts to retrieve translation data from unicode CLDR. That came out good as by the time GSoC period started, I had already written a major part of the scripts and had retrieved most of the data required for parsing. At the same time I started to write tests for dateparser and coverage has increased fairly. After the GSoC period started I made further changes to the script to resolve some issues like correcting date order of languages and storing data in order. As of now since I have added numeral data as well, data that has been retrieved is complete with all components required to translate dates as initially proposed in my proposal. The challenge now is to use this data to effectively and efficiently translate dates. Currently dateparser uses a dictionary based metho...