Working with digital humanities means delving into projects with a fair share of uncertain dates (e.g. "Spring, 1850") and periods ("starting possibly around 1860, ending January 1865").
I know what you're thinking, fellow architect/engineer/developer. Uuugh, I can't even imagine how to describe and query this.
Luckily, there's a standard for that. It's called EDTF (Extended Date/Time Format) and it is implemented over ISO 8601, the format ECMAScript - and, by extension, MongoDB - uses for date/time storage.
This is the basic ISO 8601 mask we all know and love:
yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss[.mmm]z
Soothingly constant, right? Well, all the following are valid Level 1 EDTF strings:
-
1964/2008- interval beginning sometime in 1964, ending sometime in 2008 -
2004-02-01/2005-02- interval beginning on February 1, 2004 and ending February 2005 -
1984?- possibly the year 1984, but not definitely -
1985-04/..- interval starting at 1985 April, end open -
2001-21- Spring, 2001
...yes, 21. The 21-24 code sequence refers to 'Spring', 'Summer', 'Autumn' and 'Winter'.
Level 2 ups the ante. Remember the 21 - Spring code? Well, it comes back with a vengeance, sporting beauties such as...
-
1950-25- Spring (Northern Hemisphere), 1950 -
1950-29- Spring (Southern Hemisphere), 1950 -
1950S2- some year between 1900 and 1999, estimated to be 1950 -
[1760-01,1760-02,1760-12..]- January or February of 1760 or December 1760 or some later month
If you want to read the full standard you're clearly a masochist. Oh, and here's the link.
Cover image: Old Calligraphy manuscript, Pikrepo
Top comments (0)