stamp

stamp

Format dates and times based on human-friendly examples, not arcane strftime directives.

Installation

Just gem install stamp, or add stamp to your Gemfile and bundle install.

Usage

Your Ruby dates and times get a powerful new method: stamp.

You might be concerned that "stamp" isn't descriptive enough for developers reading your code who aren't familiar with this gem. If that's the case, the following aliases are provided:

• stamp_like
• format_like

Dates

Give Date#stamp an example date string with whatever month, day, year, and weekday parts you'd like, and your date will be formatted accordingly:

date = Date.new(2011, 6, 9)
date.stamp("March 1, 1999")         #=> "June 9, 2011"
date.stamp("Jan 1, 1999")           #=> "Jun 9, 2011"
date.stamp("Jan 01")                #=> "Jun 09"
date.stamp("Sunday, May 1, 2000")   #=> "Thursday, June 9, 2011"
date.stamp("Sun Aug 5")             #=> "Thu Jun 9"
date.stamp("12/31/99")              #=> "06/09/11"
date.stamp("DOB: 12/31/2000")       #=> "DOB: 06/09/2011"

It even formats ordinal days!

date.stamp("November 5th")          #=> "June 9th"
date.stamp("1st of Jan")            #=> "9th of Jun"

Times

Time#stamp supports the same kinds of examples as Date, but also formats hours, minutes, and seconds when it sees colon-separated values.

time = Time.utc(2011, 6, 9, 20, 52, 30)
time.stamp("3:00 AM")               #=> "8:52 PM"
time.stamp("01:00:00 AM")           #=> "08:52:30 PM"
time.stamp("23:59")                 #=> "20:52"
time.stamp("23:59:59")              #=> "20:52:30"
time.stamp("Jan 1 at 01:00 AM")     #=> "Jun 9 at 08:52 PM"
time.stamp("23:59 UTC")             #=> "20:52 PST"

UTC offsets are recognized too, in both +HHMM and +HH:MM styles:

time.stamp("23:59 +00:00")          #=> "20:52 -05:00"

Without monkey patches

If you'd rather not patch Date and Time, use the module function:

require "stamp/core" # instead of "stamp"

Stamp.format(Date.new(2011, 6, 9), "Jan 1, 1999")  #=> "Jun 9, 2011"

Or a refinement, scoped to the files that opt in:

require "stamp/refinement"
using Stamp::Refinement

Date.new(2011, 6, 9).stamp("Jan 1, 1999")          #=> "Jun 9, 2011"

Converting examples to strftime formats

When you need the equivalent strftime string — for Time::DATE_FORMATS, I18n configs, or APIs that want a format rather than a formatted value:

Stamp.strftime_format("Jan 1, 1999")  #=> "%b %-d, %Y"
Stamp.strftime_format("23:59:59")     #=> "%H:%M:%S"

Ordinal days (e.g. "1st") have no strftime equivalent and raise an ArgumentError.

Features

• Abbreviated and full names of months and weekdays are recognized.
• Days with or without a leading zero work instinctively.
• Standard time zone abbreviations are recognized; e.g. "UTC", "PST", "EST".
• Include any extraneous text you'd like; e.g. "DOB:".

Disambiguation by value

You can use any month, weekday, day, or year value that makes sense in your examples, and stamp can often infer your intent based on context, but there may be times that you need to use unambiguous values to make your intent more explicit.

For example, "01/09" could refer to January 9, September 1, or January 2009. More explicit examples include "12/31", "31/12", and "12/99".

Using unambiguous values will also help people who read the code in the future, including yourself, understand your intent.

Rails Integration

Stamp makes it easy to configure your Rails application's common date and time formats in a more self-documenting way with DATE_FORMATS:

# config/initializers/date_formats.rb
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:short]    = Proc.new { |date| date.stamp("Sun Jan 5") }
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:military] = Proc.new { |time| time.stamp("5 January 23:59") }

To use your formats:

Date.today.to_s(:short)   #=> "Sat Jul 16"
Time.now.to_s(:military)  #=> "16 July 15:35"

Limitations

• DateTime should inherit stamp behavior from Date, but it hasn't been thoroughly tested. Patches welcome!

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2011-2026 Jeremy Weiskotten. See LICENSE.txt for further details.