From: Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@...>
Date: 2005-11-14T01:47:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Converting between Time and DateTime

Lloyd Zusman wrote:
> Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> [ ... ]
>>
>> I think this would be more Rubyish:
>>
>>   class DateTime
>>     def to_time
>>       Time.mktime(year, mon, day, hour, min, sec)
>>     end
>>   end
>>
>>   class Time
>>     def to_datetime
>>       DateTime.civil(year, mon, day, hour, min, sec)
>>     end
>>   end
>>
>> I haven't tested it, but it should work.
> 
> Thanks.  Is this considered more ruby-ish because of the non-camel-case
> of the method names? ... or because of the to_* methods instead of the
> from* constructors? ... or both?
> 
> 

Both. It also allows you to do something like this:

   def some_time_method(time)
     time = time.to_time  # now we know we have a Time object
   end

   some_time_method(DateTime.new(...))

That way you can use a DateTime object instead of a Time object and have 
it automatically converted. Otherwise, you'd have to do this:

   some_time_method(Time.from_datetime(DateTime.new(...)))


Cheers,
Daniel