curl_getdate(3)                 libcurl Manual                 curl_getdate(3)

NAME
       curl_getdate - Convert a date string to number of seconds

SYNOPSIS
       #include <curl/curl.h>

       time_t curl_getdate(char *datestring, time_t *now );

DESCRIPTION
       curl_getdate(3)  returns the number of seconds since the Epoch, January
       1st 1970 00:00:00 in the UTC time zone, for the date and time that  the
       datestring  parameter  specifies. The now parameter is not used, pass a
       NULL there.

PARSING DATES AND TIMES
       A "date" is a string containing several items separated by  whitespace.
       The  order  of the items is immaterial.  A date string may contain many
       flavors of items:

       calendar date items
               Can be specified several ways. Month names can only  be  three-
               letter  english abbreviations, numbers can be zero-prefixed and
               the year may use  2  or  4  digits.   Examples:  06  Nov  1994,
               06-Nov-94 and Nov-94 6.

       time of the day items
               This string specifies the time on a given day. You must specify
               it with 6 digits with two colons: HH:MM:SS. To not include  the
               time  in a date string, will make the function assume 00:00:00.
               Example: 18:19:21.

       time zone items
               Specifies international time zone. There  are  a  few  acronyms
               supported,  but  in general you should instead use the specific
               relative time  compared  to  UTC.  Supported  formats  include:
               -1200, MST, +0100.

       day of the week items
               Specifies  a  day  of the week. Days of the week may be spelled
               out in full (using english): `Sunday', `Monday',  etc  or  they
               may  be  abbreviated to their first three letters. This is usu-
               ally not info that adds anything.

       pure numbers
               If a decimal number of the form YYYYMMDD appears, then YYYY  is
               read  as  the year, MM as the month number and DD as the day of
               the month, for the specified calendar date.

EXAMPLES
       Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
       Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
       Sun Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
       06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT
       Nov  6 08:49:37 1994
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37
       06-Nov-94 08:49:37
       1994 Nov 6 08:49:37
       GMT 08:49:37 06-Nov-94 Sunday
       94 6 Nov 08:49:37
       1994 Nov 6
       06-Nov-94
       Sun Nov 6 94
       1994.Nov.6
       Sun/Nov/6/94/GMT
       Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 CET
       06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 EST
       Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:05:58 -0700
       Sat, 11 Sep 2004 21:32:11 +0200
       20040912 15:05:58 -0700
       20040911 +0200

STANDARDS
       This parser was written to handle date formats  specified  in  RFC  822
       (including  the  update  in RFC 1123) using time zone name or time zone
       delta and RFC 850 (obsoleted by RFC 1036) and ANSI C's  asctime()  for-
       mat.  These  formats  are the only ones RFC 7231 says HTTP applications
       may use.

RETURN VALUE
       This function returns -1 when it fails to parse the date string. Other-
       wise it returns the number of seconds as described.

       If  the  year  is  larger than 2037 on systems with 32 bit time_t, this
       function will return 0x7fffffff (since that  is  the  largest  possible
       signed 32 bit number).

       Having  a  64  bit time_t is not a guarantee that dates beyond 03:14:07
       UTC, January 19, 2038 will work fine. On systems with a 64  bit  time_t
       but  with  a  crippled mktime(), curl_getdate(3) will return -1 in this
       case.

SEE ALSO
       curl_easy_escape(3),  curl_easy_unescape(3),  CURLOPT_TIMECONDITION(3),
       CURLOPT_TIMEVALUE(3)

libcurl 7.54.0                 February 03, 2016               curl_getdate(3)