@flatfile/plugin-validate-date/README.md

A Flatfile plugin for normalizing date formats

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The `@flatfile/plugin-validate-date` plugin provides date format normalization functionality for Flatfile. It detects various date formats and converts them to a specified output format, supporting multiple fields and locales.

**Event Type:**
`listener.on('commit:created')`

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## Parameters

#### `config.sheetSlug` - `string` - `default: **` - (optional)
The `sheetSlug` parameter is the slug of the sheet to apply the normalizer to. If not provided, it will apply to all sheets.

#### `config.dateFields` - `string[]`
The `dateFields` parameter is an array of field names that contain date values to be normalized.

#### `config.outputFormat` - `string`
The `outputFormat` parameter specifies the desired output format for the normalized dates.

#### `config.includeTime` - `boolean`
The `includeTime` parameter determines whether to include time in the normalized output.

#### `config.locale` - `string` - (optional)
The `locale` parameter specifies the locale to use for date parsing. Currently, only 'en-US' is supported.

## Usage

```bash install
npm install @flatfile/plugin-validate-date
```

### Import

```js
import { validateDate } from '@flatfile/plugin-validate-date'
```

## Example Usage

This example sets up the date format normalizer for the "contacts" sheet, normalizing the "birthdate" and "registration_date" fields to the "MM/DD/YYYY" format.

```javascript
import { FlatfileListener } from '@flatfile/listener'
import { validateDate } from '@flatfile/plugin-validate-date'

export default function (listener: FlatfileListener) {
  listener.use(
    validateDate({
      sheetSlug: 'contacts',
      dateFields: ['birth_date', 'registration_date'],
      outputFormat: 'MM/dd/yyyy',
      includeTime: false
    })
  )
}
```

## Notes

- The plugin uses the `chrono-node` library for parsing dates, which supports a wide range of date formats.
- If a date cannot be parsed, the plugin will add an error message to the record for that field.
- The `locale` parameter is included in the configuration interface but is not currently used in the implementation. The plugin defaults to using the 'en-US' locale.