scrapinghub / scrapinghub/dateparser

"hh:mm" incorrectly jumps 24 hours ahead when date in localtime is ahead of UTC date (eg New Zealand)

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Description

Severe issue where parseDate("hh:mm") in some circumstances jumps one day ahead of where it should.

I'm in New Zealand (UTC+12).
At 2021-06-04 19:30 +00:00:00 (UTC), the local datetime in New Zealand is 2021-06-05 07:30:00.

At this time, when I call:

  • parseDate("19:40")
    I get:
  • datetime.datetime(2021, 6, 5, 19, 40)

However, last night when I used it (when the date in NZ was same as UTC - 2021-06-04), this "24 hours in the future" behaviour does not occur.

The bug only seems to happen when the localtime date in New Zealand is a day ahead of the UTC date. For New Zealand, this is between 12:00:00-23:59:59 UTC, or between 00:00:00-11:59:59 NZST.

Fix would be to test if localtime date is ahead of UTC date, and if so, adjust accordingly.

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Research direction

Start at the parseDate("hh:mm") entry point and reproduce the report using a UTC time when New Zealand's local date is already the next day. Trace how the date is chosen for time-only input, then verify that the result stays on the intended date across the UTC/NZ boundary and add coverage for the reported example.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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