partial-date
Description
A simple date class that can be used to store partial date values in a single column/attribute. An example use case would include an archive, or catalogue entry where the complete date is unknown. Year is optional and can be a negative value. Month and day are optional, but month must be set before day.
Features
PartialDate::Date uses a 30 bit register as the backing store for date instances, and bit fiddling to get or set year, month and day values. As such it will perform well in a loop or collection of date objects.
Use date.value to get or set an Integer value that can be used to rehydrate a date object, or save the date value to a persistence store in a readable Integer form e.g. 20121201 for 2012 December 01.
PartialDate::Date#to_s has the following built-in formats:
d.to_s :default => "%Y-%m-%d"
d.to_s :short :short => "%d %m %Y"
d.to_s :medium :medium => "%d %b %Y"
d.to_s :long :long => "%d %B %Y"
d_to_s :number :number => "%Y%m%d"
Custom formatters can be specified using the following:
%Y - Year with century (can be negative, 4 digits at least)
-0001, 0000, 1995, 2009, 14292, etc.
%m - Month of the year, zero-padded (01..12)
%B - The full month name ('January')
%b - The abbreviated month name ('Jan')
%d - Day of the month, zero-padded (01..31)
%e - Day of the month, blank-padded ( 1..31)
Examples
require 'partial-date'
# Default initializer
date = PartialDate::Date.new
# =>
date.value
# => 0
# Initialize from a block of integers
date = PartialDate::Date.new {|d| d.year = 2012; d.month = 01}
# => 2012-01
date.value
# => 20120100
# Initialize from a block of strings
date = PartialDate::Date.new {|d| d.year = "2012"; d.month = "01"}
# => 2012-01
date.value
# => 20120100
date.to_s :medium
# => Jan 2012
# Initialize from the class load method - for rehydrating a date instance from a stored integer date value.
date = PartialDate::Date.load 20121201
# => 2012-12-01
date.year
# => 2012
date.month
# => 12
date.day
# => 1
date.to_s :long
# => 01 December 2012
Install
$ gem install partial-date
TODO
- PartialDate::Date#parse method for construction from strings.
- I18n support.
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2012 Anthony Bouch
See {file:LICENSE.txt} for details.