From: Daniel Berger <djberg96@...>
Date: 2007-01-03T02:20:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Detecting holidays


Kieran Tully wrote:
> On 1/2/07, Daniel Berger <djberg96@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Them: Why did the report fail for Jan. 1st?
> > Me: National holiday. There was no data to grab.  Ignore the failure.
> > Them: Oh, right.
> [snip]
> > Ideally, I'd like to be able to do something like:
> >
> > if Date.today.is_national_holiday?
> >   exit # Don't run report on this day
> > end
>
> Nice, but won't this just change the problem to:
>
>  Them: Why is there no report for Jan. 1st?
>
>
> What currently happens when the report 'fails'? Could you generate an
> empty report that says
>
>  'No data available for today. Was it a holiday?'

True, I may end up doing that in practice.

> That might solve your actual problem, without introducing a 'holidays'
> module. Though if your reports often fail for other reasons, perhaps
> you do need to detect holidays to distinguish them rom real error
> conditions.

Yes, sometimes they fail for other reasons, such as the network or
database flaking out briefly.  So, in practice I see myself doing
something like:

begin
    # main report body
rescue ReportException
   if Date.today.is_national_holiday?
      # note in log that it was a holiday, in case anyone asks.
   else
      raise
   end
end

It might be a little trickier than that in practice, but that's the
general idea.

Regards,

Dan