[xsl] Comparing two dates when one is potentially malformed

Subject: [xsl] Comparing two dates when one is potentially malformed
From: "Bridger Dyson-Smith bdysonsmith@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2016 04:02:55 -0000
Hi all --

I'm wondering about best practices when dealing with potentially malformed
dates. I confess that I haven't worked with dates (xs:date, xs:time,
xs:dateTime) very much and so I'm not sure if I'm thinking about things
correctly.

I have the following input:
    <test>
        <field name="publication_date" type="date">
            <value>2011-12-01T00:00-08:00</value>
        </field>
        <field name="embargo_date" type="date">
            <value>2011-12-01T00:00-08:00</value>
        </field>
        <submission-date>2011-11-17T08:11:17-08:00</submission-date>
        <publication-date>2011-12-01T00:00-08:00</publication-date>
    </test>

And I'd like to do a comparison check on the field[@name='embargo_date'] vs
the output of current-dateTime(). I have the following stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema";
    exclude-result-prefixes="xs"
    version="2.0">

    <xsl:output encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" method="xml"/>


    <xsl:variable name="c-dateTime"
                  select="dateTime(xs:date(format-date(current-date(),
'[Y]-[M,2]-[D,2]')),
                                   xs:time(format-time(current-time(),
'[H]:[m]:[s][Z]')))"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
      <xsl:variable name="test-dateTime" as="xs:dateTime"
select="test/field[@name='embargo_date']/value"/>

      <result><xsl:value-of select="if ($test-dateTime ge $c-dateTime )
then 'embargo me!' else 'all clear!'"/></result>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I'm using Saxon HE-9.6.0.7 in oXygen 18.1, which gives me a compile time
error of "FORG0001: Invalid dateTime value "2018-12-01T00:00-08:00" (Wrong
delimiter after minute)".

Is the right thing to do here to do some string parsing on the substrings
in the values that I need to check? Is there some other way to convert the
value in field[@name='embargo_date'] into an xs:dateTime?

Thanks for your time and trouble.
Best,
Bridger

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