does chronic have any options of date format it parses? (ruby) - ruby

Question

I need to tell chronic that the format of date is day-month-year is that possible? The data I pass to chronic could also be words today/yesterday/2 days ago.
Currently chronic gives me 2 Dec 2010 instead of 12 Feb 2010 from 12-02-2010
The only solution I can think of is to swap day and month before passing the string to chronic.
require 'chronic'
puts "12-02-2010 = #{Chronic.parse('12-02-2010')}" #should be 12 Feb 2010
puts "yesteday = #{Chronic.parse('yesterday')}" #working ok
puts "Today = #{Chronic.parse('today')}" #working ok

Answer 1

I've found this question today, 20 months after it has been asked. It seems that there is a way to indicate to swap months and days. Just use the :endian_precedence option:
:endian_precedence (Array) — default: [:middle, :little] — By default,
Chronic will parse "03/04/2011" as the fourth day of the third month.
Alternatively you can tell Chronic to parse this as the third day of
the fourth month by altering the :endian_precedence to [:little,
:middle]
Example here:
Chronic.parse('12-02-2010').strftime('%d %b %Y') #=> 02 Dec 2010
Chronic.parse('12-02-2010', :endian_precedence => [:little, :median]).strftime('%d %b %Y') #=> 12 Feb 2010
Hope this helps!
Dorian

Answer 2

The output of chronic can be easily formatted. chronic.parse returns a time object. You can use strftime for formatting as described here.
puts Chronic.parse('today').strftime('%d %b %Y') #=> 23 Feb 2010
As far as the input is concerned, I cannot find anything in chronic that will do it automatically. Manipulating the input string is probably the way to go.
Edit: Chronic has an internal pre_normalize that you could over-ride..
require 'chronic'
puts Chronic.parse('12-02-2010').strftime('%d %b %Y') #=> 02 Dec 2010
module Chronic
class << self
alias chronic__pre_normalize pre_normalize
def pre_normalize(text)
text = text.split(/[^\d]/).reverse.join("-") if text =~ /^\d{1,2}[^\d]\d{1,2}[^\d]\d{4}$/
text = chronic__pre_normalize(text)
return text
end
end
end
puts Chronic.parse('12-02-2010').strftime('%d %b %Y') #=> 12 Feb 2010