Getting datespanValue

[leotumwattana]

Hi @zcohan,

I'm currently evaluating SoulverCore for a project of mine, but I'm not getting the datespanValue result I was expecting.

Maybe you can point me to what I may be doing wrong?

var customization = EngineCustomization.standard

customization.featureFlags.seeksFutureDate = true

customization.featureFlags.calendarCalculations = true

let calculator = Calculator(customization: customization)

let values = calculator.dateFor("3-4 march") // As per sample given in code base

let dateSpan = values?.result.evaluationResult.datespanValue 

print(dateSpan) // => nil 

Thanks,

Leo

[zcohan]

Hi @leotumwattana,

The dateFor function on Calculator only returns date results at present. In the next build I'll add support for datespans as well if you need this.

As a workaround in the meantime you can also get the datespan from the parsed expression:
let datespan = calculator.calculate("March 12 - 14").parsedExpression?.firstToken(ofType: .datespan)?.datespanValue

[leotumwattana]

Hi @zcohan,

Thanks for your quick reply. Adding datespan to dateFor would be an API enhancement.

However, it seems there are a few cases where the datespan parsing is having some issues:

let datespan = calculator.calculate("March 3 5pm-6pm").parsedExpression?.firstToken(ofType: .datespan)?.datespanValue

// Result: "Mar 3, 2005 at 12:00 PM" - "Mar 6, 2005 at 12:00 PM"
// Expected: "Mar 3, 2024 5pm" - "Mar 3, 2024 6pm"

let datespan = calculator.calculate("March 3 5pm for 2 hours").parsedExpression?.firstToken(ofType: .datespan)?.datespanValue

// Result: nil
// Expected: "Mar 3, 2024 5pm" - "Mar 3, 2024 7pm"

[zcohan]

A datespan in SoulverCore is a span of dates in the format March 12-14. Other dates & times are generally parsed as datestamps.

For example, your first expression has two datestamps (March 3 5pm and 6pm [today]), your second expression contains a datestamp (March 3 5pm and a unit expression of time (2 hours).

[leotumwattana]

I see. That technically makes sense, but for the use case of natural language date input ... (similar to ... Fantastical) that would not work very well.

For example, typing "Monday 5pm to 7pm" in Fantasical would result in a date interval of startDate: Nov 18th 2024 5pm, endDate: Nov 18th 2024 7pm

Would you consider that as outside the scope of SolverCore?

If so, then I probably need to consider other solutions.

[zcohan]

Try the new dateIntervalFor(_ expression: String) -> DateInterval? on Calculator in version 3.0.0.