ruby: Translate thai datetime string to datetime object

Question

I want to parse this Thai date: "15 พ.ค. 2017 12:30" into a DateTime object. How can I achieve this?

What I've found out parsing November in different languages:

✅ DateTime.parse "Novembre" => Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

✅ DateTime.parse "Noviembre" => Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

❌ DateTime.parse "พฤศจิกายน" => ArgumentError: invalid date

❌ DateTime.parse "15 พฤศจิกายน 2017 12:30" => Wed, 15 Mar 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Edit: My findings are incorrect. DateTime#parse does not translate. See Iceman's comment below.

How do I convert a string with a Thai month name into the correct date time object? — nilobject, Mar 14 '17 at 07:15
It's also quite likely that support for thai month names is just not implemented. But if you know the names _and_ the format is constant (you know which number means what), then it's trivial to take the string apart and build a Time object via `Time.new` — Sergio Tulentsev, Mar 14 '17 at 09:03
Thankyou, @SergioTulentsev. That would make sense. I'll try your recommendation. — nilobject, Mar 14 '17 at 09:17
Thai does have an i18n file here https://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/blob/master/rails/locale/th.yml so at least it should be supported in a way. — Eyeslandic, Mar 14 '17 at 10:59
@iceman Correct. This is helpful for rendering a Date object to a translated string. `I18n.l DateTime.now, :locale => :th => "15 มีนาคม 2017 10:05"` — nilobject, Mar 15 '17 at 03:04
It seems it's not parsing anything except English. The reason `Novembre` and `Noviembre` work is just because they start with `Nov`. `DateTime.parse 'Novsense'` also returns `01 Nov`. So it seems Thai is not the problem but just any language except English. — Eyeslandic, Mar 15 '17 at 10:13

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '17 at 03:02

This monkey patch to the Date class was very useful and solved my issue: https://gist.github.com/jackrg/2927162

add this line:

MONTH_TRANSLATIONS.merge! make_hash(%w/ม.ค. ก.พ. มี.ค. เม.ย. พ.ค. มิ.ย. ก.ค. ส.ค. ก.ย. ต.ค. พ.ย. ธ.ค./) # thai abbreviated

score -2 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 14 '17 at 07:10

-2

I think maybe months in Thai start form different a number than in others places in the world. So you can add one more month:

"15 เม.ย. 2017 12:30".to_datetime + 1.month

edited Mar 14 '17 at 07:10

sawa

answered Mar 14 '17 at 06:58

Dmitriy Gusev

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. If I try to convert another month from Thai, it still returns a date object with the month of March(the current month). `"15 พ.ค. 2017 12:30".to_datetime => Wed, 15 Mar 2017 12:30:00 +0000` – nilobject Mar 14 '17 at 07:16

2 Answers2