fix(plugins/dates): validate days and months in mm/dd format

[Fdawgs]

At present, compromise-dates tags anything 2-digit/2-digit as a Date:

'use strict'

const nlp = require('compromise')
const nlpDates = require('compromise-dates')
nlp.plugin(nlpDates)

const text = 'I saw him 20/24'

const doc = nlp(text)
console.log(doc.out('tags'))
/*
  Outputs:
  [
    {
      i: [ 'Noun', 'Pronoun' ],
      saw: [ 'Verb', 'PastTense' ],
      him: [ 'Noun', 'Pronoun' ],
      '20/24': [ 'Date' ]
    }
  ]
*/

This PR updates the compromise-dates plugin to perform some minor validation of days and months when provided in the mm/dd format, by ensuring the months are between 01-12 and the days are between 01-31.

[Fdawgs]

Tests are failing because mac-os-latest is now using ARM.
See fastify/.github#37

[hchiam]

i like the idea of tightening up the date detection, but i wonder if some english documents ever have the day before the month but specifically without the year, as in dd/mm? i can anecdotally say i've encountered mm/dd and dd/mm/yy etc on physical displays and digital documents, but i'm having no luck finding exact sources online of counter-examples using dd/mm

[hchiam]

i like the idea of tightening up the date detection, but i wonder if some english documents ever have the day before the month but specifically without the year, as in dd/mm? i can anecdotally say i've encountered mm/dd and dd/mm/yy etc on physical displays and digital documents, but i'm having no luck finding exact sources online of counter-examples using dd/mm

just found an explicit description: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-dates/#:~:text=writing%20dates%20as%20numerals

So remember, if you are American and you write to your British friend inviting him to celebrate Independence Day on 7/4 with you, you can expect your guest to arrive on April 7 (which he will express as 7 April). Likewise, if he invites you to his Guy Fawkes Day party on 5/11, you will need to mark your calendar for November 5 rather than May 11.

[Fdawgs]

@hchiam British dates aren't fully supported as stated in the readme.

Example:

const doc = nlp('I have to go to the hellhole that is London on 12/08, by which I mean August').dates().get();

console.log(doc);
/*
  [{ start: '2024-12-08', end: '2024-12-08' }]
*/

I assume the dates function just needs to be updated with a config param to pass the dmy: true option to the underlying spacetime module. But then that no doubt needs additional unit tests etc.

[spencermountain]

hey thanks - yeah, let's tighten it up. ya, definitely the best outcome would be passing a config to compromise, on how best to handle ambiguous dates.

[hchiam]

for future readers, i'm assuming the readme that was mentioned earlier is the readme for the date plugin: https://www.npmjs.com/package/compromise-dates -> if i look at both instances of "British", the 1st made me think it's already supported, but the 2nd made me think it's a future feature (config as y'all been saying). not sure if I'm reading it wrong, but maybe the table needs to be updated

[spencermountain]

good point Howard - ya, the blurriness in the docs really demonstrates the lack of clarity in the project. As Frasier mentioned, a lot of the date-parsing is done with spacetime, which does an ok job at british formats - and this compromise-dates plugin could simply pass these british-dates through - it's very doable, and would be a welcome PR.

If I remember:

• 03/26 - march 26
• 26/03 - march 26
• 03/04 - march 4
• 03/04 + {dmy: true} -april 3rd

open to either of you, if you've got some spare cycles. I can put it on my list for the future, otherwise.
cheers

[hchiam]

feel free to put it in the to-do list, but i plan to sometime next week investigate adding a dmy option to compromise-dates