Tryparse() how to "convert" nullables to normal type

General Usage
1

I want to test if a string is in a date format and parse it.
Becaus try … catch need a lot of time I use tryparse().
But I need a normal date, no nullable date. At the moment I do It like this:

datenullable = tryparse(Dates.Date, "2017-01-15")
if !isnull(datenullable)
    parse(Dates.Date, "2017-01-15") 
    else
    println("no match return/do something else")
end

Is there a better way?

2

I was not aware of a tryparse method for dates, but in any case, see get for accessing the value inside the Nullable. You can also provide a default as the second argument.

3

Thank you - get() works. I think tryparse() for dates is new in Julia 0.6. The following function returns the parsed date, or 0000-01-01 if parse fails, it is fast in both cases:

function parsedate(ds, df)
    datenullable = tryparse(Dates.Date, ds, df)
    if isnull(datenullable)
        return Date(0)
        else
        return get(datenullable)
    end
end

ds = "12.12.2017"
df = DateFormat("dd.mm.yyyy")
parsedate(ds, dfs)

2017-12-12

4 
parsedate(ds, df) = get(tryparse(Dates.Date, ds, df), Date(0))

makes use of the optional second argument for get, and looks a bit better because of that. Might also be a bit faster, but I didn’t check.