[New-bugs-announce] [issue30681] email.utils.parsedate_to_datetime() should return None when date cannot be parsed

[Tim Bell]

New submission from Tim Bell:

Python 3.6 documentation for email.utils.parsedate_to_datetime() says "Performs the same function as parsedate(), but on success returns a datetime." The docs for parsedate() say "If it succeeds in parsing the date...; otherwise None will be returned." By implication, parsedate_to_datetime() should return None when the date can't be parsed.

There are two different failure modes for parsedate_to_datetime():

1. When _parsedate_tz() fails to parse the date and returns None:

>>> from email.utils import parsedate_to_datetime
>>> parsedate_to_datetime('0')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/email/utils.py", line 210, in parsedate_to_datetime
    *dtuple, tz = _parsedate_tz(data)
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not iterable


2. When _parsedate_tz() succeeds, but conversion to datetime.datetime fails:

>>> parsedate_to_datetime('Tue, 06 Jun 2017 27:39:33 +0600')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/email/utils.py", line 214, in parsedate_to_datetime
    tzinfo=datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(seconds=tz)))
ValueError: hour must be in 0..23


Note that this second case is the one that led me to this issue. I am using the email package to parse spam emails for subsequent analysis, and a certain group of spam emails contain invalid hour fields in their Date header. I don't require the invalid Date header to be converted to a datetime.datetime, but accessing email_message['date'] to access the header value as a string triggers the ValueError exception. I can work around this with a custom email policy, but the observed behaviour does seem to contradict the documented behaviour.

Also, in relation to https://bugs.python.org/issue15925, r.david.murray commented "Oh, and I'm purposely allowing parsedate_to_datetime throw exceptions.  I suppose that should be documented, but that's a separate issue." However, no argument for why parsedate_to_datetime throwing exceptions is desired was given.

----------
components: email
messages: 296137
nosy: barry, r.david.murray, timb07
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: email.utils.parsedate_to_datetime() should return None when date cannot be parsed
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.5, Python 3.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue30681>
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