[PATCH] date representation: use ISO8601 rather than a specific locale

[Mads Kiilerich]

On 03/06/2015 06:38 PM, Thomas De Schampheleire wrote:
> On March 6, 2015 5:35:45 PM CET, Mads Kiilerich <mads at kiilerich.com> wrote:
>> On 03/06/2015 05:29 PM, Thomas De Schampheleire wrote:
>>> [..]
>>>>>>>> diff --git a/kallithea/lib/helpers.py b/kallithea/lib/helpers.py
>>>>>>>> --- a/kallithea/lib/helpers.py
>>>>>>>> +++ b/kallithea/lib/helpers.py
>>>>>>>> @@ -469,7 +469,7 @@
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>      def fmt_date(date):
>>>>>>>>          if date:
>>>>>>>> -        _fmt = u"%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S".encode('utf8')
>>>>>> Heh - making a const unicode string with all ascii chars and then
>>>>>> encoding
>>>>>> it to utf8 ... that seems a bit convoluted ;-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It does however raise the question of how this function was
>> supposed to
>>>>>> handle locales where the name of the day or month had unicode
>> chars.
>>>>>> With your changes it will always only be ascii chars and it would
>> perhaps
>>>>>> be
>>>>>> more clear to use unicode(...) instead of .decode.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> +        _fmt = u"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S".encode('utf8')
>>>>>>>>              return date.strftime(_fmt).decode('utf8')
>>>>> I'm not very familiar with unicode and didn't really understand
>> that
>>>>> part of the original code, to be honest.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you mean this:
>>>>>
>>>>> _fmt = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
>>>>> return unicode(date.strftime(_fmt))
>>>>>
>>>>> and thus finally simply:
>>>>>
>>>>> return unicode(date.strftime(DATETIME_FORMAT))
>>>> Yes, i did.
>>>>
>>>> That will however apparently also put an "invisible" constraint on
>>>> DATETIME_FORMAT; it must be unicode-able without specifying
>> encoding.
>>>> I think the big unknown for me is whether datetime.datatime strftime
>> ever
>>>> can be localized and return unicode strings or if it always will be
>> in
>>>> english and thus be pure ascii that trivially converts to unicode.
>> Perhaps
>>>> also whether it will return a unicode string if it is given a
>> unicode format
>>>> string.
>>> The %c format key will return a localized date representation, so it
>>> can be unicode.
>>>
>>> Manual says:
>>> 'strftime() returns a locale depedent byte string; the result may be
>>> converted to unicode by doing
>>> strftime(<myformat>).decode(locale.getlocale()[1]).'
>>> https://docs.python.org/2/library/time.html#time.strftime
>>>
>>> However, on my PC, locale.getlocale()[1] returns None and decode
>>> doesn't accept that.
>>>
>>> I guess
>>> return unicode(date.strftime(DATETIME_FORMAT))
>>> should still be fine? Or should it be changed to something else?
>> Hmm ...
>>
>> I think I will suggest just keeping the format string hardcoded so it
>> is
>> "obvious" what is going on. I will tweak your patch as
>>          return date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S").decode('utf8')
>>
>> DATETIME_FORMAT and friends have apparently no purpose and should just
>> be removed.
> Ok, do you expect an updated patch from me?

No - I have it in my queue and will push it in next round.

/Mads