Date & Time modules for Elixir

A draft implementation of date and time functionality based on Idea #6 from this proposal page.

Status

This project is open for adoption. If you'd like to become a maintainer, contact me.

The API for Date may change slightly, but not too much. I have recently removed the format function. Date formatting and parsing will be provided by this other project.

The Time module is pretty much in flux, please don't depend on it too much.

To add this library to your project, edit your mix.exs file so that it looks similar to this:

defp deps do
  [{:"elixir-datetime", github: "alco/elixir-datetime"}]
end

After that, run mix deps.get and start using Date functions in your project's code.

Overview

This is a draft implementation of two modules for Elixir that are going to deal with all aspects of working with dates and time intervals.

Basically, the Date module is for dealing with dates. It supports getting current date in any time zone, calculating time intervals between two dates, shifting a date by some amount of seconds/hours/days/years towards past and future. As Erlang provides support only for the Gregorian calendar, that's what I'm going to stick to for the time being.

Support for working with time zones is not finalized. Although there is no time zone database yet, you may create time zones by manually specifying offset and name and it'll work correctly, i.e. you'll be able to convert between time zones, format dates to strings, etc.

The Time module supports a finer grain level of calculations over time intervals. It is going to be used for timestamps in logs, measuring code executions times, converting time units, and so forth.

Use cases

In all of the examples below, DateFmt is used for formatting.

Getting current date

Get current date in the local time zone.

date = Date.now()
DateFmt.format!(date, "{ISO}")      #=> "2013-09-30T16:40:08+0300"
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")  #=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:40:08 EEST"
DateFmt.format!(date, "{kitchen}")  #=> "4:40PM"

The date value that Date produced encapsulates current date, time, and time zone information. This allows for great flexibility without any overhead on the user's part.

Since Erlang's native date format doesn't carry any time zone information, Date provides a bunch of constructors that take Erlang's date value and an optional time zone.

datetime = {{2013,3,17},{21,22,23}}

date = Date.from(datetime)           # datetime is assumed to be in UTC by default
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")   #=> "Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:22:23 GMT"

date = Date.from(datetime, :local)   # indicates that datetime is in local time zone
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")   #=> "Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:22:23 EEST"

Date.local(date)  # convert date to local time zone
#=> {{2013,3,17},{21,22,23}}

# Let's see what happens if we switch the time zone
date = Date.set(date, tz: { -8, "PST" })
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")
#=> "Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:22:23 PST"

Date.universal(date)  # convert date to UTC
#=> {{2013,3,17},{18,22,23}}

Working with time zones

Currently, we need to build time zones by hand. The functions in Date are already respecting time zone offsets when doing calculations. Time zone names are used by DateFmt during formatting.

date = Date.from({2013,1,1}, Date.timezone(5, "SomewhereInRussia"))
DateFmt.format!(date, "{ISO}")
#=> "2013-01-01T00:00:00+0500"
DateFmt.format!(date, "{ISOz}")
#=> "2012-12-31T19:00:00Z"

DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")
#=> "Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 SomewhereInRussia"

date = Date.now()
Date.universal(date)                        #=> {{2013,3,17},{19,37,39}}
Date.local(date)                            #=> {{2013,3,17},{21,37,39}}
Date.local(date, Date.timezone(-8, "PST"))  #=> {{2013,3,17},{11,37,39}}

Extracting information about dates

Find out current weekday, week number, number of days in a given month, etc.

date = Date.now()
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")
#=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:51:02 EEST"

Date.weekday(date)           #=> 1
Date.weeknum(date)           #=> {2013, 40}
Date.iso_triplet(date)       #=> {2013, 40, 1}

Date.days_in_month(date)     #=> 30
Date.days_in_month(2012, 2)  #=> 29

Date.is_leap(date)           #=> false
Date.is_leap(2012)           #=> true

Date arithmetic

Date can convert dates to time intervals since UNIX epoch or year 0. Calculating time intervals between two dates is possible via the diff() function (not implemented yet).

date = Date.now()
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")
#=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:55:02 EEST"

Date.convert(date, :sec)  # seconds since Epoch
#=> 1380549302

Date.to_sec(date, :zero)  # seconds since year 0
#=> 63547768502

DateFmt.format!(Date.epoch(), "{ISO}")
#=> "1970-01-01T00:00:00+0000"

Date.epoch(:sec)  # seconds since year 0 to Epoch
#=> 62167219200

date = Date.from(Date.epoch(:sec) + 144, :sec, :zero)  # :zero indicates year 0
DateFmt.format!(date, "{ISOz}")
#=> "1970-01-01T00:02:24Z"

Shifting dates

Shifting refers to moving by some amount of time towards past or future. Date supports multiple ways of doing this.

date = Date.now()
DateFmt.format!(date, "{RFC1123}")
#=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:58:13 EEST"

DateFmt.format!( Date.shift(date, sec: 78), "{RFC1123}" )
#=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:59:31 EEST"

DateFmt.format!( Date.shift(date, sec: -1078), "{RFC1123}" )
#=> "Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:40:15 EEST"

DateFmt.format!( Date.shift(date, day: 1), "{RFC1123}" )
#=> "Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:58:13 EEST"

DateFmt.format!( Date.shift(date, week: 3), "{RFC1123}" )
#=> "Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:58:13 EEST"

DateFmt.format!( Date.shift(date, year: -13), "{RFC1123}" )
#=> "Sat, 30 Sep 2000 16:58:13 EEST"

Working with Time module

The Time module already has some conversions and functionality for measuring time.

## Time.now returns time since UNIX epoch ##

Time.now
#=> {1362,781057,813380}

Time.now(:sec)
#=> 1362781082.040016

Time.now(:msec)
#=> 1362781088623.741


## Converting units is easy ##

t = Time.now
#=> {1362,781097,857429}

Time.to_usec(t)
#=> 1362781097857429.0

Time.to_sec(t)
#=> 1362781097.857429

Time.to_sec(13, :hour)
#=> 46800

Time.to_sec(13, :msec)
#=> 0.013


## We can also convert from timestamps to other units using a single function ##

Time.convert(t, :sec)
#=> 1362781097.857429

Time.convert(t, :min)
#=> 22713018.297623817

Time.convert(t, :hour)
#=> 378550.30496039696


## elapsed() calculates time interval between now and t ##

Time.elapsed(t)
#=> {0,68,-51450}

Time.elapsed(t, :sec)
#=> 72.100247

t1 = Time.elapsed(t)
#=> {0,90,-339935}


## diff() calculates time interval between two timestamps ##

Time.diff(t1, t)
#=> {-1362,-781007,-1197364}

Time.diff(Time.now, t)
#=> {0,105,-300112}

Time.diff(Time.now, t, :hour)
#=> 0.03031450388888889

Converting time units

dt = Time.now
Time.convert(dt, :sec)
Time.convert(dt, :min)
Time.convert(dt, :hour)

Time.to_timestamp(13, :sec)
Time.to_timestamp([{13, :sec}, {1, :days}, {6, :hour}], :strict)

FAQ

Which functions provide microsecond precision?

If you need to work with time intervals down to microsecond precision, you should take a look at the functions in the Time module. The Date module is designed for things like handling different time zones and working with dates separated by large intervals, so the minimum time unit it uses is seconds.

So how do I work with time intervals defined with microsecond precision?

Use functions from the Time module for time interval arithmetic.

What is TimeDelta module for?

this will likely not make it far; I'm going to use timestamps instead

TimeDelta provides functions for encapsulating a certain time interval in one value. This value can later be used to adjust multiple dates by the same amount. The delta values can be defined in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.

How do I find the time interval between two dates?

Use Date.seconds_diff() to obtain the number of seconds between two given dates. If you'd like to know, how many days, months, weeks, and so on are between the given dates, take look at conversion functions defined in TimeInterval module.

What kind of operations is this lib going to support eventually?

Can't say for sure yet. My goal is to make it easy to work with dates and time intervals so that you won't ever need to resort to Erlang's calendar, time, some functions from erlang and a bunch of other one.

Some inspirations may be drawn from these: https://github.com/dweldon/edate/blob/master/src/edate.erl, http://www.kodejava.org/browse/73.html

What is support for time zones going to look like?

Not sure yet. Erlang does not support working time zones, so we can either use OS-specific functions and implement this feature for each platform separately or package a time zone database with this library and write the implementation in Elixir itself.

References: https://github.com/drfloob/ezic

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license.