Question

I want to know if Ruby has an easy way to find all the date range between two date ranges. I have two date arrays: January 01, 08:00 and January 01, 12:00 in one array, and January 01, 09:00 to January 01, 10:00 in another. I want to return an array like:

January 1, 08:00 to January 1, 09:00

and:

January 1, 10:00 to January 1, 12:00

Answer 1

This is one way to do it:

date_array_1, date_array_2 = [
  'January 01, 08:00', 'January 01, 12:00',
  'January 01, 09:00', 'January 01, 10:00'
].map{ |s| DateTime.parse(s) }.each_slice(2).to_a

That sets up two arrays of dates.

require 'date'

def date_ranges(ary1, ary2)
  [
    ary1,
    ary2
  ].flatten.sort.each_slice(2).map{ |s| s.first .. s.last }
end

puts date_ranges(date_array_1, date_array_2)

Which outputs:

2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00..2013-01-01T09:00:00+00:00
2013-01-01T10:00:00+00:00..2013-01-01T12:00:00+00:00

---

if I want to have date_array_2 to be an array of date? is it easy? Like date_array_1 = [‘January 01, 08:00’, ‘January 01, 13:00’] date_array_2 = [[‘January 01, 09:00’, ‘January 01, 10:00’], [‘January 01, 11:00’, ‘January 01, 12:00’]]

The two date arrays look like:

date_array_1 = ['January 01, 08:00', 'January 01, 12:00']
date_array_2 = ['January 01, 09:00', 'January 01, 10:00']

Coerce them into DateTime objects:

[ date_array_1, date_array_2 ].map{ |a| a.map!{ |d| DateTime.parse(d) } }