A Node.js library for parsing year range strings and converting them into usable dates. This library is only designed to handle year ranges (all month/day information is discarded).
Its usage is best explained through some examples:
var yr = require("yearrange");
yr.parse("1877")
// {"start": 1877, "end": 1877}
yr.parse("1847-48")
// {"start": 1847, "end": 1848}
yr.parse("ca. 1810-20s")
// {"start": 1810, "end": 1829, "circa": true}
yr.parse("18th–19th century")
// {"start": 1700, "end": 1899}
yr.parse("Meiji era")
// {"start": 1868, "end": 1912}
Many more examples can be found in the test/date-tests.json file.
This library was originally built for parsing dates from museums, universities, galleries, and dealers for Ukiyo-e.org by John Resig.
In essence there is only a single generally-useful method exposed:
This method takes in a single argument: A string holding the year range. The method returns an object representing the date range.
For example an object after calling parse("1877") might look like:
{"original":"1877","start":1877,"end":1877}
If no valid date is matched by the parser then undefined is returned instead.
The library is released under an MIT license.