The Date Parsing Stage (previously called the Date Parser stage) is an index pipeline stage that performs parsing and normalization of date/time data in document fields which uses the Fusion DateUtils library. The resulting date/time information is available both as a timestamp in UTC time zone as well as a local date/time in the original local time zone. The time zone name, offset and the epoch time are stored in separate fields, too. Additionally the formatted dates can be split into their components, and each component added to separate document fields. Note that this stage works only with data that consists solely of the date/time information, i.e. it will not work correctly if dates are a part of a larger piece of text.

Timestamp splitting options

Splitting options help in processing timestamp information without resorting to scripting - e.g. in order to index day of week information it is more convenient and faster to split the timestamp in this stage, and then just discard other components that are not needed (using a field mapping stage), rather than using a JavaScript stage to parse and split the timestamp manually. Please note that time zone name and time zone offset, as well as epoch time, are always added as separate fields regardless of the splitting options. E.g. for a field named test these values will be added as fields tz.test, tz_offset.test, and epoch.test. The option splitLocal splits the timestamp in its original timezone, while the option splitUTC first converts the timestamp to UTC and then splits it. The resulting date and time components are stored in fields that follow patterns <part>.local.<fieldName> and <part>.utc.<fieldName> respectively. The following parts are extracted and added to the document:
  • year. year component
  • month. month in year, from 1 to 12
  • day. day in month, from 1 to 31
  • yday. day in year, from 1 to 356
  • weekday. day of week, 1 being Monday and 7 being Sunday
  • week. week in year, from 1 to 52. Note: in the standard ISO8601 week algorithm, the first week of the year is that in which at least 4 days are in the year. As a result of this definition, day 1 of the first week may be in the previous year, which will be indicated by weekyear. The opposite is also true - last day of the last week may be in the next year, and weekyear will show the next year.
  • weekyear. year corresponding to the week value. This can be either the current year or previous one, or the next one.
  • hour. hour in day, from 0 to 23
  • min. minute in hour, from 0 to 59
  • sec. second in minute, from 0 to 59
  • ms. millisecond in second, from 0 to 999
Example: given this normalized timestamp in the original timezone 2015-01-01 00:00:00.000 Europe/Warsaw in a field test, the corresponding normalized UTC timestamp will be 2014-12-31T23:00:00.00Z.

Example: splitLocal parsing

The following table shows the additional fields added to a document as the result of applying splitLocal parsing to the contents a field named test which contains the value 2015-01-01 00:00:00.000 Europe/Warsaw:
Field namevalue
tz.testEurope/Warsaw
tz_offset.test+01:00
epoch.test1420066800000

Example: splitUTC parsing

The following table shows the additional fields added to a document as the result of applying splitUTC parsing to the contents a field named test which contains the value 2015-01-01 00:00:00.000 Europe/Warsaw:
Field namevalue
tz.testEurope/Warsaw
tz_offset.test+01:00
epoch.test1420066800000
year.utc.test2014
year.local.test2015
month.utc.test12
month.local.test1
day.utc.test31
day.local.test1
yday.utc.test365
yday.local.test1
weekday.utc.test3
weekday.local.test4
week.utc.test1
week.local.test1
weekyear.utc.test2015
weekyear.local.test2015
hour.utc.test23
hour.local.test0
min.utc.test0
min.local.test0
sec.utc.test0
sec.local.test0
ms.utc.test0
ms.local.test0
Note: The following:
  • weekday is different. UTC day of week is Wednesday, and local day of week is already Thursday.
  • yday in UTC points to the last day of the year, while it is the first day of the year in local time zone, similarly with day.
  • week and weekyear are the same in both cases. because according to the ISO 8601 definition all days of this week belong to year 2015 so it does not matter whether it is Wednesday or Thursday.

Configuration

Adding a New Format

If no new format is added, a default list of formats will be used. The default formats are listed in the table below:
PatternNotes
EEE yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS zzz
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSSZWith numeric +-HHmm timezone at the end
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSSZZWith numeric +-HH:mm timezone at the end
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSSzWith symbolic XXX timezone at the end
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:sszWith symbolic XXX timezone at the end
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ssZWith offset
EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss z yyyy
EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss Z yyyy
EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss z yyyy
EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss.SSS z yyyy
EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz
EEEE, dd-MMM-yy HH:mm:ss zzz
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss ZZ
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS Z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS ZZ
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzzWith full time zone (e.g. America/New_York)
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss’GMT’ZWith literal “GMT” and offset
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSS’GMT’ZWith literal “GMT” and offset
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss’UTC’ZWith literal “UTC” and offset
yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss.SSS’UTC’ZWith literal “UTC” and offset
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss 'UTC’Z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS 'UTC’Z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss 'GMT’Z
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS 'GMT’Z
dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz
The list of accepted symbols for constructing a new format are listed below:
SymbolMeaningExample
GeraAD
Ccentury of era (>=0)20
Yyear of era (>=0)1996
xweekyear1996
wweek of weekyear27
eday of week2
Eday of weekTuesday Tue
yyear1996
Dday of year189
Mmonth of yearJuly Jul 07
dday of month10
ahalfday of dayPM
Khour of halfday (0~11)0
hclockhour of halfday (1~12)12
Hhour of day (0~23)0
kclockhour of day (1~24)24
mminute of hour30
ssecond of minute55
Sfraction of second978
ztime zonePacific Standard Time; PST
Ztime zone offset/id-0800 -08:00 America/Los_Angeles
'escape for text
''single quote'
The number of symbols used determine the format of the output. For text output, if 4 or more symbols are used, the full form is used. EEEE would output Tuesday, while E outputs Mon. For numeric outputs, the amount of symbols used is the same as the minimum digits used for representation. If the number is smaller, then it will be padded with zeroes. HH would be 09, while H is 9. For the year, the representation for year and weekyear is different. For example, if the count of y is two, the year would be the two digit, zero-based year of the century. For the month, if there are three or more symbols, then the text is used. For example, MM would output 03, MMM outputs Mar, and MMMM outputs March. For the zone, Z outputs the offset without a colon, ZZ outputs the offset with a colon, and ZZZ or more outputs the zone id. For the zone name, time zone names 'z' cannot be parsed. Any characters in the imput that are not in the range of ['a'…​'z'] and ['A'…​'Z'] will be treated like quoted text. So, characters like ',' or '-' will appear in the output time text even if they are not wrapped in single quotes. A new configuration can be made using a combination of the symbols and regular characters. For example, the pattern E MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.SSS would output the formatted date Mon 01/16/2017 10:53:32.939.
When entering configuration values in the UI, use unescaped characters, such as \t for the tab character. When entering configuration values in the API, use escaped characters, such as \\t for the tab character.