ruby/ruby · error · ArgumentError

no time information in #{date.inspect}

Error message

no time information in #{date.inspect}

What it means

Time.parse feeds the string to Date._parse and passes the fragments to make_time. If every temporal component is nil (no year, yday, mon, day, hour, min, sec, or sec_fraction was recognized), it cannot construct any Time and raises ArgumentError 'no time information in <string.inspect>'. A string yielding only a zone name is not enough.

Source

Thrown at lib/time.rb:203

        if off != 0 then
          day -= off
          if day < 1
            mon -= 1
            if mon < 1
              year -= 1
              mon = 12
            end
            day = month_days(year, mon)
          end
        end
      end
      return year, mon, day, hour, min, sec
    end
    private :apply_offset

    def make_time(date, year, yday, mon, day, hour, min, sec, sec_fraction, zone, now)
      if !year && !yday && !mon && !day && !hour && !min && !sec && !sec_fraction
        raise ArgumentError, "no time information in #{date.inspect}"
      end

      off = nil
      if year || now
        off_year = year || now.year
        off = zone_offset(zone, off_year) if zone
      end

      if yday
        unless (1..366) === yday
          raise ArgumentError, "yday #{yday} out of range"
        end
        mon, day = (yday-1).divmod(31)
        mon += 1
        day += 1
        t = make_time(date, year, nil, mon, day, hour, min, sec, sec_fraction, zone, now)
        diff = yday - t.yday
        return t if diff.zero?

View on GitHub (pinned to 0e5b888e1c)

Solutions

1. Pre-check recognition: Date._parse(str) and require a real component (e.g. :year, :mday, or :hour) before calling Time.parse
2. Rescue ArgumentError and use a fallback (nil or Time.now) with a targeted rescue, not a blanket one
3. Use a strict format when you control the input: Time.strptime(str, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
4. Fix the upstream extraction so the date substring actually reaches the parser

Example fix

# before
ts = Time.parse(line)              # free-text line with no date -> raises

# after
frag = Date._parse(line)
ts = (frag[:year] || frag[:mday] || frag[:hour]) ? Time.parse(line) : nil

frag = Date._parse(candidate)
has_time = frag.slice(:year, :mday, :hour, :min, :sec).any? { |_, v| v }
ts = has_time ? Time.parse(candidate) : nil

begin
  Time.parse(candidate)
rescue ArgumentError
  nil  # or fallback_time
end

When it happens

Trigger: Time.parse(""); Time.parse("hello world"); Time.parse("UTC") (zone only); Time.parse(nil) goes through a different coercion; parsing a free-text field that happens to contain no recognizable date.

Common situations: Log lines whose date sits on a previous line; optional config/env fields that are blank; scraping where the selector grabbed the wrong element; user-entered notes fed into Time.parse.

Related errors

• yday #{yday} out of range
• invalid date or strptime format - '#{date}' '#{format}'
• timezone argument given as positional and keyword arguments
• end of file reached
• OpenSSL::PKey::DH is immutable on OpenSSL 3.0; use OpenSSL::

AI-assisted analysis of ruby/ruby@0e5b888e1c (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/97e5bee708b0a43b. Report an issue: GitHub.