TimeWillTell

Specialized conversions of dates and times to strings.

Add time_will_tell to your Gemfile:

gem 'time_will_tell'

Run the generator to add the default locale file time_will_tell.en.yml to your config/locales directory:

$ rails generate time_will_tell:install

time_will_tell offers 2 view helpers for dealing with dates.

The similarity with distance_of_time_in_words is not a coincidence. Both methods share the a similar signature:

exact_distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, to_time, options = {})

# => '2 hours 33 minutes'
# => '1 hour and a half'
# => '3 years 11 months and 21 seconds'
# => '1 month 15 days and 1 minute'
# => '1 day 2 hours and a half and 5 seconds'
# => 'half an hour'

Displaying the seconds is optional and off by default. Use include_seconds: true to include them.

You can also supply your own locale by specifying a locale scope. The default is time_will_tell.distance_in_words.

You can either replace the default locale strings or copy the structure under a different scope to be able to toggle between a default version and an alternate one.

For example, the following scope would output

compact_distance_in_words:
  template: "%{count}%{unit}"
  template_long: "%{rest} %{last}"

  units:
    second: s
    minute: m
    hour: h
    day: d
    month: M
    year: Y

  special:
    half_an_hour: 30m
    and_a_half: 30m

exact_distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, to_time, scope: 'compact_distance_in_words')
# => '1d 2h 30m 5s'

date_range simplifies displaying a date range in a brief format.

# Oct 3 - 8, 2012
# Jan 30 - Feb 5, 2013
# Dec 26, 2012 - Jan 3, 2013

The output depends on whether the dates are on the same day, month and year.

You can choose to display the full month names by specifying format: :long.

date_range(from_date, to_date, format: :long)
# January 30 - February 5, 2013

You can choose a different separator if you don't like this guy -.

date_range(from_date, to_date, separator: 'to')
# Oct 3 to 8, 2012

Sometimes you don't want the year to show up in the date range.

date_range(from_date, to_date, show_year: false)
# Jan 30 - Feb 5

By default the year will always be shown. Also, if the dates are in different years, the years will be shown even if show_year is false.

Just as with exact_distance_of_time_in_words you can specify your own locale scope.

1. Fork it ( http://github.com//time_will_tell/fork )
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