Goodtimes

Tools for formatting date and time, including an Activerecord extension.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'goodtimes'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install goodtimes

Usage

Date/Time Setters

Define some date_time_formats:

config/initializers/date_time_formats.rb

{
  :isdn                          => "%Y-%m-%d",
  :isdn_with_time                => "%Y-%m-%d %I:%M %p"
}.each do |name, pattern|
  Date::DATE_FORMATS.merge!( name => pattern )
  Time::DATE_FORMATS.merge!( name => pattern )
end

{
  :default  => "%m/%d/%Y",
  :db       => "%Y-%m-%d"
}.each do |name, pattern|
  Date::DATE_FORMATS.merge!( name => pattern )
end

{
  :default                 => "%m/%d/%Y %R %Z",
  :db                      => "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
}.each do |name, pattern|
  Time::DATE_FORMATS.merge!( name => pattern )
end

Now when you call #to_s on an ActiveRecord instance you will get the default format output:

person = Person.new( :date_of_birth => '1999-01-01' )
person.date_of_birth #=> 01/01/1999

However, the converse is not true. If you try to set #date_of_birth with the default format, you will get an 'invalid date' exception (if it is not a date that Date can already parse).

person.date_of_birth = '1/1/1999' #=> invalid date

In order to fix this:

class Person

  date_attr_writer :date_of_birth

end

person = Person.new( :date_of_birth => '1/1/1999' )
person.date_of_birth #=> 01/01/1999

When date_attr_writer is called with no options, it tries to use the default date format defined for your Rails application: Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default].

You can also specify a format to use in multiple ways. You can provide a symbol and goodtimes will look for a format in Date::DATE_FORMATS that matches.

date_attr_writer :date_of_birth, :format => :isdn

Additionally you can give the :format option a string and goodtimes will use it as the format.

date_attr_writer :date_of_birth, :format => '%m-%d-%Y'
date_attr_writer :date_of_birth, :format => Date::DATE_FORMATS[:isdn]

Date/Time Format Import

In an initializer file:

Goodtimes::DateTimeFormats.import # to import all formats

Goodtimes::DateTimeFormats.import :isdn, :timestamp, :timestamp_long # to import 3 specific formats formats

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request