Set up a date field
You want to extract a date from your documents?
You can do that with the API Builder by creating a Date field in the Data Model configuration step. (See Data Model configuration tutorial).
This section will walk you through the implications of setting up a Date field.
Prerequisites
- You’ll need a free beta account. Sign up and confirm your email to login.
Let’s get started!
After giving a name, description and cover image to your new API, you should land on the following page
Build a Date field by filling in the right-side form and selecting “Date” in the Field Type drop-down menu.
Additional parameters
If you have additional context about this specific field or how the information is usually displayed in your documents, you can specify it during the field set up.
Feed parameters through UI
Through the UI, you may specify a date format between:
- US (m/d/y)
- EU (d/m/y)
This format should be the format is which most dates are displayed on your documents.
Warning: This format is not to be interpreted as the date format you want to have in the API response scheme.
Impact for training and making predictions
Candidates
By specifying the data type as Date, you will force the engine to only consider words and series of words that can be interpreted as a date as eligible candidates.
Warning: This means that, for this specific field, we will never be able to extract any information in your document that cannot be interpreted as a date.
Text parsed
Anything that can be read as a date including:
- Standard formats : “12/08/1980” or “1/1/19”
- Alpha characters for months : “December, 8th 1980”
- Dates missing the day information : “January 2019”
If the date you are looking for is sometimes displayed in another way, you should use a String field.