From: Max Williams <toastkid.williams@...>
Date: 2009-07-11T23:02:49+09:00
Subject: A clean way to edit a time?

Hi all

I have a method, created_at=, which takes a time or a string, and
changes a Time field, created_at, accordingly.  If we get a time, then
it's easy: just set created_at to be the given time.

However, if we get a string, it's going to be only a date, like
"11/07/09", and in this case i want to update only the day, month and
year of created_at, and leave the rest alone.  In some cases, like when
a new record is made, then there will be no value in created_at, so the
method should cope with the current value of created_at being nil (i do
this by setting the time to Time.now before updating it with the new
values).

Currently i have this which feels like a bit of a hacky mess.  Can
anyone show me a cleaner solution?


    def created_at=(time)
      if time.kind_of?(Time)
        self[:created_at] = time
      elsif time.kind_of?(String)
        begin
          parsed_time = DateTime.strptime(time, "%d/%m/%y")
          old_time = self.created_at || Time.now
          return self[:created_at] = Time.local(parsed_time.year,
parsed_time.month, parsed_time.day, old_time.hour, old_time.min,
old_time.sec)
        rescue
          return false
        end
      end
    end

Also, i can't get it to return the new time value, and it doesn't return
false if it raises the exception.  In either case it just returns the
string that i passed to it. It's not vital that it return the new
created_at value (or false) but it would be nice.

I'm doing this in a framework based on Ramaze so maybe the last point is
due to something inherited from that.

thanks!
max
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