Tiny DSL for idiomatic date parsing and formatting.

require "yymmdd"

include YYMMDD

puts yy/mm              # 14/08 (i.e., today's date)
puts yyyy/mm            # 2014/08
date = ymd(411207)      # Date.new(1941, 12, 7)

date = Date.today
puts yyyy.mm.dd(date)   # 2014.08.09
puts dd/mm/yy(date)     # 08/09/14
puts ymd(date)          # 1489
puts yymmdd(date)       # 140809

date = yyyy.mm.dd("1941.12.07")  # Date.new(1941, 12, 7)
date = mm.dd.yy("11.22.63")      # Date.new(1963, 11, 22)
date = mm/dd/yy("11/21/99")      # ...
date = mm/dd/yyyy("11/21/1999")
date = mm-dd-yyyy("11-21-1999")
date = m-d-y("11-21-99")

gem install yymmdd

gem "yymmdd"

All functions are module_functions so you must include YYMMDD to use them.

When given a String it will attempt to parse it as the specified format and return a Date.

When given a Date it will return a String in the specified format.

An ArgumentError is raised if the date can't be parsed or formatted.

With no arguments it will return an instance of a String-like object (it overrides to_s and to_str) representing today's date in the specified format. In the most common cases you can treat it like a String:

date = yyyy/mm/dd
puts "Today's date: #{date}"
text = ["Dates: ", yy/mm, yyyy/mm].join(", ")
text = "A great date: " << date

But in some instances you'll have to expilictly call to_s:

printf "Today's date: %s\n", date.to_s

All the heavy lifting is done by Date#strftime and Date.strptime.

The table below lists the available format specifiers. All of these can be separated by one of the supported delimiters: "/", ".", or "-".

There are also combined, delimiterless functions for all combinations of the above, e.g., ymd, mdy, yymmdd, etc...

Due to operator precedence you can't mix delimiters.

Skye Shaw [sshaw AT gmail.com]

Released under the MIT License: www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT