Class | Date
In: | lib/standard/facets/date.rb
Parent: | Object

# Date

This new version of Date extension has been largely improved by porting some of the methods used by ActiveSupport. The old version already had much in common with the Active Support library, so it was decided to take it a step further in that direction for the sake of interoparability.

Hopefully most of these methods will find there way into Ruby‘s own standard library eventually.

The biggest difference with ActiveSupport is the lack of many of the "English-esque" methods, and that we use stamp with Date::FORMAT, instead of to_formmated_s with Date::DATE_FORMATS. We do not override the standard to_s method like ActiveSupport does.

### Methods

advance ago beginning_of_day change current days_in_month days_of_month in midnight month_name since stamp to_date to_datetime to_time tomorrow tomorrow xmlschema yesterday yesterday

### Constants

FORMAT | = | { :short => "%e %b", :long => "%B %e, %Y", :db => "%Y-%m-%d", :number => "%Y%m%d", :rfc822 => "%e %b %Y", :default => "%Y-%m-%d", nil => "%Y-%m-%d"

### Public Class methods

current()

Returns Time.zone.today when config.time_zone is set, otherwise just returns Date.today.

tomorrow()

Returns a new Date representing the date 1 day after today (i.e. tomorrow‘s date).

yesterday()

Returns a new Date representing the date 1 day ago (i.e. yesterday‘s date).

### Public Instance methods

advance(options)

Provides precise Date calculations for years, months, and days. The `options` parameter takes a hash with any of these keys: `:years`, `:months`, `:weeks`, `:days`.

ago(seconds)

Converts Date to a Time (or DateTime if necessary) with the time portion set to the beginning of the day (0:00) and then subtracts the specified number of seconds

beginning_of_day()

Converts Date to a Time (or DateTime if necessary) with the time portion set to the beginning of the day (0:00).

change(options)

Returns a new Date where one or more of the elements have been changed according to the `options` parameter.

      Date.new(2007, 5, 12).change(:day=>1)                 # Date.new(2007, 5, 1)
      Date.new(2007, 5, 12).change(:year=>2005, :month=>1)  # Date.new(2005, 1, 12)

days_in_month()

Returns the number of days in the date‘s month.

      Date.new(2004,2).days_in_month  #=> 29

CREDIT: Ken Kunz.

days_of_month()
in(seconds)

Alias for since

midnight()

Alias for beginning_of_day

month_name()

Get the month name for this date object

CREDIT: Benjamin Oakes

since(seconds)

Converts Date to a Time (or DateTime if necessary) with the time portion set to the beginning of the day (0:00) and then adds the specified number of seconds.

stamp(format=:default)

Convert to a formatted string. See DATE_FORMATS for predefined formats.

This method is aliased to `to_s`.

      date = Date.new(2007, 11, 10)   # Sat, 10 Nov 2007

      date.stamp(:db)                 # => "2007-11-10"
      date.stamp(:short)              # => "10 Nov"
      date.stamp(:long)               # => "November 10, 2007"
      date.stamp(:rfc822)             # => "10 Nov 2007"

## Adding your own formats to stamp

You can add your own formats to the Date::FORMAT hash. Use the format name as the hash key and a strftime string as the value. Eg.

      Date::FORMAT[:month_and_year] = "%B %Y"

to_date()

A method to keep Time, Date and DateTime instances interchangeable on conversions. In this case, it simply returns `self`.

to_datetime()

Converts a Date instance to a DateTime, where the time is set to the beginning of the day and UTC offset is set to 0.

      date = Date.new(2007, 11, 10)  # Sat, 10 Nov 2007
      date.to_datetime               # Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:00:00 0000

to_time(form=:local)

Converts a Date instance to a Time, where the time is set to the beginning of the day. The timezone can be either :local or :utc (default :local).

      date = Date.new(2007, 11, 10)  # Sat, 10 Nov 2007

      date.to_time                   # Sat Nov 10 00:00:00 0800 2007
      date.to_time(:local)           # Sat Nov 10 00:00:00 0800 2007

      date.to_time(:utc)             # Sat Nov 10 00:00:00 UTC 2007

tomorrow()

Convenience method which returns a new Date/DateTime representing the time 1 day since the instance time.

xmlschema()
yesterday()

Convenience method which returns a new Date/DateTime representing the time 1 day ago.

[Validate]