How to read a timestamp?

How to read a timestamp?

[Marcin Borkowski]

Hi all,

I need to ask the user for a date (with or without time - if no time is
supplied, I want to assume 9:00am).  I know that `org-read-date' is
quite a powerful way to do it, but what if I do not want to depend on
Org-mode?

TIA,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: How to read a timestamp?

[Robert Thorpe]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I need to ask the user for a date (with or without time - if no time is
> supplied, I want to assume 9:00am).  I know that `org-read-date' is
> quite a powerful way to do it, but what if I do not want to depend on
> Org-mode?

You could use calendar-read-date, if you don't want to load org.

BR,
Robert Thorpe

Re: How to read a timestamp?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-08-12, at 02:09, Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I need to ask the user for a date (with or without time - if no time is
>> supplied, I want to assume 9:00am).  I know that `org-read-date' is
>> quite a powerful way to do it, but what if I do not want to depend on
>> Org-mode?
>
> You could use calendar-read-date, if you don't want to load org.

Thanks for the suggestion.  For the record, I found safe-date-to-time,
which is even better.  Here is my ask-for-timestamp function.  (Since
the results of safe-date-to-time might be unexpected, the user is asked
for confirmation just to make sure that Emacs got his/her intentions
right.)

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun ask-for-timestamp ()
  "Ask the user for the timestamp, and return it as Unix time.
If `org-read-date' is present, use that; if not, fall back to
`safe-date-to-time' and augment the result with current time."
  (time-to-seconds
   (if (fboundp 'org-read-date)
       (org-read-date nil t)
     (let ((time))
       (while
	   (progn (setq time (safe-date-to-time (read-string "Date+time: ")))
		  (not
		   (y-or-n-p
		    (format-time-string "Time entered: %c. Confirm? " time)))))
       time))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

> BR,
> Robert Thorpe

Thanks and regards,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: How to read a timestamp?

[Emanuel Berg]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> I need to ask the user for a date (with or without
> time - if no time is supplied, I want to assume
> 9:00am). I know that `org-read-date' is quite
> a powerful way to do it, but what if I do not want
> to depend on Org-mode?

I wrote something to that extent a while back:

    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/conf/emacs-init/time-my.el

Here is the relevant Elisp. (To add "time", change the
arguments to `encode-time'.)


(defun time-between-times (year1 month1 day1
                           year2 month2 day2)
  (let*((seconds-then  (float-time (encode-time 0 0 0 day1 month1 year1)))
        (seconds-now   (float-time (encode-time 0 0 0 day2 month2 year2)))
        (seconds-diff  (- seconds-now seconds-then)) )
    (format-seconds "%Y, %D" seconds-diff)))

(defun print-time-since (year month day)
  (format-seconds "%Y, %D" (float-time
                            (time-since (encode-time 0 0 0 day month year)))) )

;; test:
;;   (time-between-times 2010 4 15 2015 3 16)
;;   (print-time-since 2010 4 15)


You are welcome :)

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: How to read a timestamp?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-08-12, at 04:56, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> I need to ask the user for a date (with or without
>> time - if no time is supplied, I want to assume
>> 9:00am). I know that `org-read-date' is quite
>> a powerful way to do it, but what if I do not want
>> to depend on Org-mode?
>
> I wrote something to that extent a while back:

It seems you misunderstood my question.  I want to read a timestamp from
the minibuffer, not display it.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: How to read a timestamp?

[Emanuel Berg]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> It seems you misunderstood my question. I want to read
> a timestamp from the minibuffer, not display it.

You can either do that with a normal interactive
function which reads digits one by one, or you can
have the user input the whole string and then do
a parsing. Then you can use `encode-time' just as in
my code to get internal time.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573