natural language date parser

[platonai]

We need parse dates from natural language text:

String text = "Let's meet next Friday for coffee.";
Parser parser = new Parser();
List<DateGroup> groups = parser.parse(text);

Popular Libraries:

Natty:
A widely-used library that handles a variety of date formats, including relative dates ("next Tuesday"), formal dates ("2023-07-20"), and relaxed expressions ("the first Monday of April 2000").
Hawking:
Developed by Zoho, Hawking is another powerful option that excels at context understanding. It considers the tense of the sentence and can extract multiple dates from a single input.

import com.joestelmach.natty.DateGroup;
import com.joestelmach.natty.Parser;
import java.util.List;

public class DateParserExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String text = "Let's meet next Friday for coffee.";
        Parser parser = new Parser();
        List<DateGroup> groups = parser.parse(text);

        if (!groups.isEmpty()) {
            DateGroup group = groups.get(0);
            System.out.println("Parsed date: " + group.getDates().get(0));
        } else {
            System.out.println("No dates found.");
        }
    }
}

Key considerations:

Accuracy: While these libraries are quite accurate, they might struggle with ambiguous expressions or domain-specific language.
Context: Hawking particularly shines at considering the context of the date expression, leading to more accurate results.
Dependencies: Remember to include the necessary library dependencies in your project.