Dates-LE

Dates-LE: Zero Hassle Date Extraction

Pull every date and timestamp out of the current file in one keystroke

Any text file — JSON, YAML, CSV, XML, TOML, Markdown, logs, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, and the rest

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What it does

Open a file, run Dates-LE: Extract Dates, and every date in the document lands in a new editor — deduplicate, sort, analyze, convert, filter, or validate it from there. Works in VS Code and in VS Code–based editors like Cursor and VSCodium (installable from Open VSX).

• Log analysis — timestamps from server logs: ISO, syslog, and Apache access-log formats
• Data review — dates and epochs from JSON, YAML, CSV, and XML
• Code audit — date literals and new Date()/Date.parse()/moment()/dayjs()/DateTime.fromISO() arguments in JS/TS, including calls formatted across multiple lines

Install

Use it from an AI agent

The same engine runs as an MCP server, so an agent can call it directly instead of you running a command.

extract_dates(content, format?, filename?, dedupe?, dateOrder?, kinds?, maxResults?)

Returns every date with its notation, epoch value where resolvable, and 1-based line and column, capped at 500 by default with meta.truncated. dateOrder (mdy or dmy, default mdy) decides a numeric date such as 05/01/2024 that could be read either way round. kinds chooses which kinds of date come back, and leaves unix out unless it is listed.

The server takes content and returns data — it reads no files and makes no network requests of its own. Published as dates-le-mcp on npm and as io.github.nolindnaidoo/dates-le in the MCP registry.

Configuring it by hand — any host with an MCP config file

Most hosts read a JSON config. Add one entry:

{

"mcpServers": { "dates-le": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "dates-le-mcp"] } } }

-y skips the install prompt on first run. Pin a version if you would rather not track releases — dates-le-mcp@2.5.0.

Prefer not to go through npx on every launch? Install it once and point at the binary instead:

npm install -g dates-le-mcp

{

"mcpServers": { "dates-le": { "command": "dates-le-mcp" } } }

It speaks MCP over stdio and needs no environment variables, no API key and no configuration of its own. To check it before wiring it into anything:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' | npx -y dates-le-mcp

That prints the tool list and exits — if you see extract_dates, the server works.

Supported formats

Every document is read. A format only ever *adds* patterns to the shared ones, so a language ID this does not name — Python, Go, Rust, shell, SQL — is scanned with the shared patterns rather than refused. What it does not get is the format-specific extras: Jan 15 10:30:47 is a date in a log file and three words in a Python one.

Recognized date patterns: ISO 8601 in extended (2024-01-15T10:30:00Z, with optional milliseconds and offset), basic (20240115, 20240115T103045Z), week (2024-W03, 2024-W03-1) and ordinal (2024-015) form; RFC 2822 (Mon, 15 Jan 2024 10:30:00 GMT); Unix epochs in seconds, milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds, when `dates-le.kinds` includes `unix` (exactly 10, 13, 16 or 19 digits that land between 2001-09-09 and 2100, so a phone number, a request id or a card number is not a date in the 2100s or 2200s; digits embedded in a longer number, in a longer word such as a commit hash, or in the fraction of a float are never matched at all); UTC strings; bare YYYY-MM-DD; numeric dates with the day or the month first, separated by /, . or - (15/01/2024, 1/15/2024, 15.01.2024 14:00, 15-01-2024 3:30 PM), with an optional time; and dates with the month written out (15 January 2024, 3rd Feb. 2024, Jan 15, 2024, 15-JAN-2024). A numeric date is read the one way it can be when a number is over 12; only when both could be a month does dates-le.dateOrder decide, and dotted dates are always day first. Every numeric or written date is checked against the calendar, so 31/02/2024 is not a date, and a numeric year must fall within 1900–2099. Every occurrence is reported with its real line and column. Values that cannot be resolved to a timestamp are not extracted.

Timezone names are the fixed offsets GMT/UT/UTC/Z, the eight US abbreviations, and CEST, CET, BST, JST, AEST, IST. They are fixed, not zone-aware.

Known limitations: an ambiguous numeric date follows dates-le.dateOrder, which is month first unless you change it; written-out months are English only; syslog lines carry no year, so the current year is assumed; IST names three different zones and is read as India's +05:30; a bare 8-digit run is only a date inside 1900–2099, and a 10-digit number inside the epoch window cannot be told from a Unix time, which is why that kind is off unless you turn it on.

Across a folder or a workspace

Extract reads the document you have open. A scan reads many files from disk and gives one report: the project's dates, in time order.

• The whole workspace: run Dates-LE: Extract Dates from Workspace from the command palette.
• One folder: right-click it in the Explorer and choose Extract Dates from Folder, or run Dates-LE: Extract Dates from Folder and pick one.

Each date is listed once however it is spelled, the earliest first, with the spellings, how often it is written and where:

# Dates-LE workspace report

my-project · 3 file(s) read · 3 distinct date(s), 5 occurrence(s) in 3 file(s)

2024-01-15 (3)

• docs/release.md · 1:9, 1:31
• src/config.ts · 1:17

The same date is one row. 2024-01-15, 2024-01-15T00:00:00Z and January 15, 2024 are one date written three ways, and the table says so. A date written with a time zone is a moment and is named in UTC, with the offset it was written with left in the "Written as" column. One written without a zone is named by what was written, so it is the same date on every machine. An ambiguous date such as 03/04/2024 is read the way dates-le.dateOrder says.

Every date is in the table. One written once is placed in its row. A repeated one gets a section below that lists each place.

That is with dates-le.showPositions on. It is off by default, and then each place is the file and how many times the date is in it: docs/release.md (2). The copy on the clipboard follows dates-le.clipboardIncludesPositions, as it does for Extract.

What a scan reads. Files come from disk, so an unsaved edit is not seen. A file over the safety size, or one that is not UTF-8 text, is left unread. It stops at 5,000 files or 10,000 listed occurrences. The report ends with a line for each thing it left out, so a short report is never mistaken for a clean project.

What it skips, and how to change that. Three switches are on by default, and each can be turned off on its own in Settings:

| scanRespectGitignore | Whatever the project's .gitignore