by_* (by_star) is a plugin that allows you to find ActiveRecord objects given certain date objects.
Install this gem by adding this to your Gemfile:
gem 'by_star', :git => "git://github.com/radar/by_star"Then run bundle install. Hey presto, it's done!
This was originally crafted for only finding objects within a given month, but now has extended out to much more. It now supports finding objects for:
- A given year
- A given month
- A given fortnight
- A given week
- A given weekend
- A given day
- The current weekend
- The current work week
- The Past
- The Future
- Between certain times
- Before a specific record
- After a specific record
All methods return scopes. I love these. You love these. Everybody loves these.
It also allows you to do nested finds on the records returned which I personally think is the coolest feature of the whole plugin:
Post.by_month(1).include(:tags).where("tags.name" => "ruby")
If you're not using the standard created_at field: don't worry! I've covered that scenario too.
You can treat all by_* methods exactly how you would treat normal, every-day ActiveRecord scopes. This is because all by_* methods return ActiveRecord::Relation objects, with the exception of previous and next, which return a single record. You can call them like this:
Post.by_month.your_scope
Where my_special_scope is a named_scope you have specified.
You can also call typical ActiveRecord::Relation methods on the by_* methods (like I showed before):
Post.by_month.include(:tags).where("tags.name" => "ruby")
Want to count records? Simple:
Post.by_month.count
To find records from the current year, simply call the method without any arguments:
Post.by_year
To find records based on a year you can pass it a two or four digit number:
Post.by_year(09)
This will return all posts in 2009, whereas:
Post.by_year(99)
will return all the posts in the year 1999.
You can also specify the full year:
Post.by_year(2009)
Post.by_year(1999)
If you know the number of the month you want:
Post.by_month(1)
This will return all posts in the first month (January) of the current year.
If you like being verbose:
Post.by_month("January")
This will return all posts created in January of the current year.
If you want to find all posts in January of last year just do
Post.by_month(1, :year => 2007)
or
Post.by_month("January", :year => 2007)
This will perform a find using the column you've specified.
If you have a Time object you can use it to find the posts:
Post.by_month(Time.local(2012, 11, 24))
This will find all the posts in November 2012.
Fortnight numbering starts at 0. The beginning of a fortnight is Monday, 12am.
To find records from the current fortnight:
Post.by_fortnight
To find records based on a fortnight, you can pass in a number (representing the fortnight number) or a time object:
Post.by_fortnight(18)
This will return all posts in the 18th fortnight of the current year.
Post.by_fortnight(18, :year => 2012)
This will return all posts in the 18th fortnight week of 2012.
Post.by_fortnight(Time.local(2012,1,1))
This will return all posts from the first fortnight of 2012.
Week numbering starts at 0. The beginning of a week is Monday, 12am.
To find records from the current week:
Post.by_week
To find records based on a week, you can pass in a number (representing the week number) or a time object:
Post.by_week(36)
This will return all posts in the 36th week of the current year.
Post.by_week(36, :year => 2012)
This will return all posts in the 36th week of 2012.
Post.by_week(Time.local(2012,1,1))
This will return all posts from the first week of 2012.
If the time passed in (or the time now is a weekend) it will return posts from 12am Saturday to 11:59:59PM Sunday. If the time is a week day, it will show all posts for the coming weekend.
Post.by_weekend(Time.now)
To find records for today:
Post.by_day
Post.today
To find records for a certain day:
Post.by_day(Time.local(2012, 1, 1))
You can also pass a string:
Post.by_day("next tuesday")
This will return all posts for the given day.
This method has been shown to be shifty when passed a Date object, it is recommended that you pass it an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone object instead.
To find all posts from the day after the current date:
Post.tomorrow
To find all posts after a given Date or Time object:
Post.tomorrow(Date.today + 2)
Post.tomorrow(Time.now + 5.days)
You can also pass a string:
Post.tomorrow("next tuesday")
This method has been shown to be shifty when passed a Date object, it is recommended that you pass it an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone object instead.
To find all posts from the day before the current date:
Post.yesterday
To find all posts before a given Date or Time object:
Post.yesterday(Date.today + 2)
Post.yesterday(Time.now + 5.days)
You can also pass a string:
Post.yesterday("next tuesday")
To find all posts before the current time:
Post.before
To find all posts before certain time or date:
Post.before(Date.today + 2)
Post.before(Time.now + 5.days)
You can also pass a string:
Post.before("next tuesday")
To find all posts after the current time:
Post.after
To find all posts after certain time or date:
Post.after(Date.today + 2)
Post.after(Time.now + 5.days)
You can also pass a string:
Post.after("next tuesday")
To find records between two times:
Post.between(time1, time2)
Also works with dates:
Post.between(date1, date2)
To find the record prior to this one call previous on any model instance:
Post.last.previous
You can specify a field also:
Post.last.previous("published_at")
To find the record after this one call next on any model instance:
Post.last.next
You can specify a field also:
Post.last.next("published_at")
If your database uses something other than created_at for storing a timestamp, you can specify the field option like this:
Post.by_month("January", :field => :something_else)
All methods support this extra option.
Or if you're doing it all the time on your model, then it's best to use by_star_field at the top of your model:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
by_star_field :something_else
end
Thanks to Thomas Sinclair for the original bump for implementing it. I would like to thank #rubyonrails for their support and the following people:
- Mislav Marohnic
- August Lilleas (leethal)
- gte351s
- Sam Elliott (lenary)
- The people who created Chronic
- Erik Fonselius
If you have suggestions, please contact me at [email protected]