Chronic Distance

A simple Ruby natural language parser for distances. Given a parse-able string distance, it returns the distance in millimeters.

The reverse can also be accomplished with the output method. Given a distance in millimeters, it outputs a string like "4 kilometers" or "4km" depending on the desired format.

Installation

    $ sudo gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
    $ sudo gem install olauzon-chronic_distance

Usage

    >> require 'chronic_distance'
    => true

Parsing examples

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('5 kilometers')
    => 5000000

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('4 miles')
    => 6437376

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('four miles')
    => 6437376

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('1000m')
    => 1000000

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('1000 meters')
    => 1000000

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('ten yards')
    => 9144.0

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('500 feet')
    => 152400.0

Nil is returned if the string can’t be parsed:

    >> ChronicDistance.parse('kilometers')
    => nil

Output examples

    >> ChronicDistance.output(5000000)
    => 5000000 mm

    >> ChronicDistance.output(5000000, :format => :short, :unit => 'kilometers')
    => 5km

    >> ChronicDistance.output(5000000, :format => :long, :unit => 'kilometers')
    => 5 kilometers

    >> ChronicDistance.output(5000000, :unit => 'meters')
    => 5000 m

    >> ChronicDistance.output(5000000, :format => :long, :unit => 'miles')
    => 3.10685596118667 miles

Inspiration

ChronicDistance borrows heavily from:

• hpoydar’s ChronicDuration github.com/hpoydar/chronic_duration
• mojombo’s Chronic github.com/mojombo/chronic

TODO

• Benchmark, optimize
• Other locale support

Copyright © 2009 Olivier Lauzon. See MIT-LICENSE for details.