Time extensions are an unsung hero of Active Support

In Active Support‘s extensions to the core Ruby classes, some of the most useful and plentiful are related to Time.

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One of Rails’s founding uses was to provide helpful, reusable methods for regularly performed tasks. In our web applications we‘re often working with times and dates.

Enter the methods from DateAndTime::Calculations. To find out more check out out the API documentation or the DateTime section in the Core Extensions Rails guide.

Familiarise yourself with…

…the extensions to Date:

today = Date.today
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022
today.end_of_week
#=> Sun, 09 Oct 2022
today.beginning_of_month
#=> Sat, 01 Oct 2022
today.end_of_quarter
#=> Sat, 31 Dec 2022
today.beginning_of_year
#=> Sat, 01 Jan 2022
today.all_day
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00..Mon, 03 Oct 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
today.all_week
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022..Sun, 09 Oct 2022
today.all_month
#=> Sat, 01 Oct 2022..Mon, 31 Oct 2022
today.all_year
#=> Sat, 01 Jan 2022..Sat, 31 Dec 2022
today.on_weekday?
#=> true
today.next_occurring(:thursday)
#=> Thurs, 06 Oct 2022

…and DateTime:

right_now = Time.zone.now
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 08:30:23.666835000 UTC +00:00
right_now.beginning_of_day
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00
right_now.end_of_week
#=> Sun, 09 Oct 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.beginning_of_month
#=> Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00
right_now.end_of_quarter
#=> Sat, 31 Dec 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.beginning_of_year
#=> Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00
right_now.all_day
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00..Mon, 03 Oct 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.all_week
#=> Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00..Sun, 09 Oct 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.all_month
#=> Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00..Mon, 31 Oct 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.all_year
#=> Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00.000000000 UTC +00:00..Sat, 31 Dec 2022 23:59:59.999999999 UTC +00:00
right_now.on_weekday?
#=> true
right_now.next_occurring(:thursday)
#=> Thurs, 06 Oct 2022 08:30:23.666835000 UTC +00:00

Why?

These are tremendously useful, and well-named, methods to help describe the date and time logic in your applications.

Why not?

While this style of extending core Ruby classes is sometimes derided by folks who dislike Rails’s ”magical” style… you’d be a bit silly to reimplement your own date calculations inside a Rails application.

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Last updated on October 3rd, 2022 by @andycroll