Home/ Questions/Q 6793065
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-26T18:03:23+00:00

I use chronic to return parsed date objects like so: last_pay_date = Date.parse(Chronic.parse(‘2011-11-04’).strftime(%Y-%m-%d)) two_weeks_ago

  • 0

I use chronic to return parsed date objects like so:

last_pay_date = Date.parse(Chronic.parse('2011-11-04').strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))
two_weeks_ago = Date.parse(Chronic.parse("two weeks ago").strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))

puts last_pay_date # 2011-11-04
puts last_pay_date.class # Date
puts two_weeks_ago # 2011-10-24
puts two_weeks_ago.class # Date

But what I really want to do is date a date object like last_day_date and have the date two weeks before returned, like so:

two_weeks_ago = Date.parse(Chronic.parse("two weeks before #{last_pay_date}").strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))

This returns nil, as other attempts, both with variables and hard coded:

last_pay_date = Date.parse(Chronic.parse('2011-11-04').strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))
two_weeks_ago = Chronic.parse("two weeks before #{last_pay_date}")
puts two_weeks_ago.class #NilClass
puts two_weeks_ago.nil? #true

two_weeks_ago = Chronic.parse("2 weeks before 2011-11-04 05:00:00")
puts two_weeks_ago.class #NilClass
puts two_weeks_ago.nil?  #true

Questions:

  1. Can I use chronic to parse offsets of existing date objects? (eg. 14 days before this date instead of just +14 days).

  2. Can I use chronic to parse offsets of existing dates at all?

  3. How is this best accomplished, even if the solution is outside of chronic?

Edit: I am running Ruby 1.9.2 without rails. These are strait up ruby scripts, though I’ll happily include any gems needed to do the job.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    First off, is this Ruby 1.8 or 1.9? If 1.9, you have the Date#strptime method available, which makes parsing dates from strings pretty easy.

    Once you have your pay date, getting two weeks earlier from it is pretty easy, even without Chronic.

    Date.strptime("11/7/2011", "%m/%d/%Y").next_day(-14)

    If this is Ruby 1.8, then if ActiveSupport is available (ie, if this is a Rails app), there are Fixnum extensions that make this trivial.

    last_pay_date - 2.weeks

    However, I suspect that it is not available. In Ruby 1.8.7, Date#next_day is private, so you can’t invoke it directly, but you can still invoke it if you really want to.

    Date.parse("11/7/2011").send(:next_day, -14)

    If you don’t mind bypassing the private protection, this works just fine.

    • 0