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

Useful? A star or rating is how other developers find it — ★ GitHub · ★ Open VSX · ★ Marketplace

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.

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

npm install -g dates-le-mcp

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

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

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)

| Date | Written as | Occurrences | Files | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `2024-01-15` | `2024-01-15`, `2024-01-15T00:00:00Z`, `January 15, 2024` | 3 | 2 | |
| `2024-03-01T08:30:00Z` | `2024-03-01T10:30:00+02:00` | 1 | 1 | `data/events.json` · **2:13** |
| `2025-12-31` | `2025-12-31` | 1 | 1 | `docs/release.md` · **2:14** |

## `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:

Two lists adjust the result without turning a switch off. To skip more, add a pattern to scanExcludes. To read something a switch would skip, add it to scanAlwaysInclude:

{
	// Also skip the test fixtures.
	"dates-le.workspace.scanExcludes": ["**/fixtures/**"],
	// Read the vendored code, though the built-in list skips it.
	"dates-le.workspace.scanAlwaysInclude": ["**/vendor/**"]
}

Dates-LE: Open Settings opens all of these in the Settings editor.

The settings that shape a scan are under Settings.

The CLI

The same extraction runs from a terminal or a CI step: a Rust CLI in crate/, sharing one corpus with the extension — crate/fixtures/ — so the two can never read a document differently.

dates-le .                          # every date in the tree, as JSON
dates-le --before 2026-01-01 .      # everything already in the past
dates-le --sort --iso config/       # ordered by instant, in readable form
dates-le mcp                        # the same extraction over MCP on stdio

The instant is the point. 2024-01-15, 1705276800 and Mon, 15 Jan 2024 are one moment written three ways, and resolving each to a number is what makes them sortable and comparable rather than three strings to read. Resolution matches Date.parse in V8 exactly — legacy parser included — against 178 cases taken from V8 itself.

A date with no timezone resolves against the machine's, because that is the true answer and it genuinely differs by machine. TZ is honoured.

Choosing which kinds of date are extracted

dates-le.kinds is a checklist of the kinds of date every command picks up. A kind left out is not reported, in Extract, in a folder or workspace scan, and in Analyze, Convert, Filter and Validate.

Unix time is off by default. It is the one kind that does not look like a date: any ten-digit number in the right range is one, and so is an id or a phone number of the same length. Turn it on when you are reading logs or data that carry them:

{
	"dates-le.kinds": ["iso", "simple", "local", "rfc2822", "utc", "week", "ordinal", "basic", "custom", "unix"]
}

The MCP tool and the CLI take the same list, as a kinds argument and a --kinds flag, and leave unix out by default as the extension does.

Commands

No command is bound to a key by default. Give any of them one under Keyboard Shortcuts in the editor.

Settings

Languages

Twelve languages besides English:

German · Spanish · French · Indonesian · Italian · Japanese · Korean · Portuguese (Brazil) · Russian · Ukrainian · Vietnamese · Chinese (Simplified)

Both halves are covered — the manifest (command titles, setting names and descriptions) and everything shown while the extension runs (notifications, the status bar, quick-picks and prompts). The extension follows VS Code's display language, so it matches whatever the editor is already set to; no setting of its own.

Privacy & security

• No network access. The extension never sends data anywhere. The telemetryEnabled setting only writes events to a local Output Channel you can inspect (Dates-LE Telemetry).
• The MCP server holds the same line. It takes content as an argument and returns data: no filesystem access, no network calls, no telemetry. Your agent already has file-read tools, so duplicating them inside the server would add a path-traversal surface for no capability. check:mcp-bundle fails the build if the server ever imports something that could reach either.
• Error notifications redact home directories and credential-shaped fragments.
• One rating prompt, at most twice. On the 3rd successful use the extension asks once whether you would rate it, and once more on the 20th if you chose Later or dismissed it. Don't Ask Again ends it. Setting notificationsLevel to important or silent yourself turns it off. The counts are kept in VS Code's extension storage and nothing is sent anywhere; Rate opens the listing you installed from — the VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX — in your browser.

Documentation

Performance

Median of 7 runs after warmup, on Apple M5 Pro, 24 GB RAM, Node 24.3.0. Inputs are generated by scripts/benchmark.ts rather than checked in, so the sizes above are exactly what was measured. Reproduce with bun run benchmark.

These are machine-specific and are not asserted in CI — a benchmark that gates a build only tells you how busy the runner was.

Testing

358 test cases across 28 files, plus an integration suite that runs in a real VS Code extension host and an end-to-end test that installs the built .vsix into a clean profile.

Generated from a real run — coverage/coverage-summary.json and coverage/test-results.json — by scripts/coverage-readme.js; CI fails if this section drifts. Reproduce with bun run test:coverage, and the case count is the one vitest prints.

More from the LE family

Sixteen single-purpose tools for the work in front of every model. Each ships a Rust CLI and an MCP server. One page: letools.dev

Get it out

• String-LE — Extract every string in a codebase, with its position, so a person can read them
• Numbers-LE — Extract every hardcoded number in a codebase, so a person can check them
• Units-LE — Extract every quantity with its unit, normalized, and refuse the ambiguous ones by name
• Dates-LE — Extract every date and timestamp, and the exact instant each one resolves to
• IDs-LE — Extract every UUID, ULID, NanoID, ObjectId and Snowflake, and decode the time inside
• IPs-LE — Extract every IP address, CIDR block and MAC, normalized and classified by scope
• URLs-LE — Extract every URL in a codebase, with its protocol and exact position
• Paths-LE — Extract every file path in a codebase, and say whether it still points at anything
• Colors-LE — Extract every color in a codebase, and say which ones are not in your palette

Check it

• Regex-LE — Find every regex in a codebase, and report which can be driven into catastrophic backtracking
• Versions-LE — Find where one dependency is constrained differently across a repository's manifests
• i18n-LE — Identify the i18n library a project uses, then audit its catalogs by that library's rules
• Scrape-LE — Check whether a page is scrapeable before the scraper is written, and say when it cannot tell

Guard it

• Secrets-LE — Find hardcoded credentials in a codebase, and never print one into the report
• EnvSync-LE — Compare the dotenv files in a tree, and say which keys are missing from which
• Unicode-LE — Find the Unicode that hides meaning — bidi controls, invisibles, homoglyphs, mixed scripts

Each stands on its own: no shared crate, no published core. Where two of them agree, it is because the same answer was right twice.

Contact — nolindnaidoo.com · GitHub · LinkedIn

Also by nolindnaidoo

Rust — pixelcoords and pixelactions are one loop: pixelcoords answers where, pixelactions acts there. Their own tools, their own voice — not part of the LE family.

• pixelcoords — Freeze your screen, mark regions, get pixel-exact coordinates and crops pixelcoords.dev · crates.io · docs.rs
• pixelactions — Consume human-verified coordinates, perform the interaction, confirm it landed pixelactions.dev · crates.io · docs.rs

License

MIT © nolindnaidoo