From: Ron M <rm_rails@...>
Date: 2005-11-16T22:22:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Converting between Time and DateTime

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
> Chris Pine wrote:
> 
>> I *wish* Time and DateTime worked more like Fixnum and Bignum.
> 
> What kind of change would you suggest? 

I'd like classes like DBI that use Time to (through some trick
like integer->bignum) allow dates 200 years in the future.


Today, that's not the case, and selecting fields representing
a 200-year-lease throws an error when done through DBI.


irb(main):028:0> dbh.select_all("select begin_date,end_date from leases")
ArgumentError: time out of range
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/sql.rb:60:in `gm'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/sql.rb:60:in `as_timestamp'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:777:in `as_timestamp'
# end date is in 2204.

I'd like to see a Time with an out-of-range year automatically
produce a 'BigTime' class in exactly the same way that an out
of range integer produces a Bignum.    Whether this is the same
as DateTime or not doesn't matter much to me.  Being able to
use a realistic range of dates in DBI does.