Python Module To Extract Probable Dates From Strings?

I'm looking for a Python module that would take an arbitrary block of text, search it for something that looks like a date string, and build a DateTime object out of it. Something

Solution 1:

The nearest equivalent is probably the dateutil module. Usage is:

>>>from dateutil.parser import parse>>>parse("Wed, Nov 12")
datetime.datetime(2008, 11, 12, 0, 0)

Using the fuzzy parameter should ignore extraneous text. ie

>>>parse("the date was the 1st of December 2006 2:30pm", fuzzy=True)
datetime.datetime(2006, 12, 1, 14, 30)

Solution 2:

Why no give parsedatetime a try?