by_* (by_star) is a plugin that allows you to find ActiveRecord and/or Mongoid objects given certain date objects.

Install this gem by adding this to your Gemfile:

gem 'by_star', :git => "git://github.com/radar/by_star"

Then run bundle install.

If you are using ActiveRecord, you're done!

Mongoid users, please include the Mongoid::ByStar module for each model you wish to use the functionality. This is the convention among Mongoid plugins.

class MyModel
  include Mongoid::Document
  include Mongoid::ByStar

This was originally crafted for only finding objects within a given month, but now has extended out to much more. It now supports finding objects for:

• A given year
• A given month
• A given fortnight
• A given week
• A given weekend
• A given day
• A given quarter
• The weeks of a given month as shown on a calendar
• The current weekend
• The current work week
• The Past
• The Future
• Between certain times
• Before a specific record
• After a specific record

All methods return scopes. I love these. You love these. Everybody loves these.

It also allows you to do nested finds on the records returned which I personally think is the coolest feature of the whole plugin:

Post.by_month(1).include(:tags).where("tags.name" => "ruby")

If you're not using the standard created_at field: don't worry! I've covered that scenario too.

You can treat all by_* methods exactly how you would treat normal, every-day ActiveRecord scopes. This is because all by_* methods return ActiveRecord::Relation objects, with the exception of previous and next, which return a single record. You can call them like this:

Post.by_month.your_scope

Where my_special_scope is a named_scope you have specified.

You can also call typical ActiveRecord::Relation methods on the by_* methods (like I showed before):

Post.by_month.include(:tags).where("tags.name" => "ruby")

Want to count records? Simple:

Post.by_month.count

To find records from the current year, simply call the method without any arguments:

Post.by_year

To find records based on a year you can pass it a two or four digit number:

Post.by_year(09)

This will return all posts in 2009, whereas:

Post.by_year(99)

will return all the posts in the year 1999.

You can also specify the full year:

Post.by_year(2009)
Post.by_year(1999)

If you know the number of the month you want:

Post.by_month(1)

This will return all posts in the first month (January) of the current year.

If you like being verbose:

Post.by_month("January")

This will return all posts created in January of the current year.

If you want to find all posts in January of last year just do

Post.by_month(1, :year => 2007)

or

Post.by_month("January", :year => 2007)

This will perform a find using the column you've specified.

If you have a Time object you can use it to find the posts:

 Post.by_month(Time.local(2012, 11, 24))

This will find all the posts in November 2012.

Finds records for a given month as shown on a calendar. Includes all the results of by_month, plus any results which fall in the same week as the first and last of the month. Useful for working with UI calendars which show rows of weeks.

Post.by_calendar_month

Parameter behavior is otherwise the same as by_month

Fortnight numbering starts at 0. The beginning of a fortnight is Monday, 12am.

To find records from the current fortnight:

Post.by_fortnight

To find records based on a fortnight, you can pass in a number (representing the fortnight number) or a time object:

Post.by_fortnight(18)

This will return all posts in the 18th fortnight of the current year.

Post.by_fortnight(18, :year => 2012)

This will return all posts in the 18th fortnight week of 2012.

Post.by_fortnight(Time.local(2012,1,1))

This will return all posts from the first fortnight of 2012.

Week numbering starts at 0. The beginning of a week is Monday, 12am.

To find records from the current week:

Post.by_week

To find records based on a week, you can pass in a number (representing the week number) or a time object:

Post.by_week(36)

This will return all posts in the 37th week of the current year (remember week numbering starts at 0).

Post.by_week(36, :year => 2012)

This will return all posts in the 37th week of 2012.

Post.by_week(Time.local(2012,1,1))

This will return all posts from the first week of 2012.

If the time passed in (or the time now is a weekend) it will return posts from 12am Saturday to 11:59:59PM Sunday. If the time is a week day, it will show all posts for the coming weekend.

Post.by_weekend(Time.now)

To find records for today:

Post.by_day
Post.today

To find records for a certain day:

Post.by_day(Time.local(2012, 1, 1))

You can also pass a string:

Post.by_day("next tuesday")

This will return all posts for the given day.

Finds records by 3-month quarterly period of year. Quarter numbering starts at 1. The four quarters of the year begin on Jan 1, Apr 1, Jul 1, and Oct 1 respectively.

To find records from the current quarter:

Post.by_quarter

To find records based on a quarter, you can pass in a number (representing the quarter number) or a time object:

Post.by_quarter(4)

This will return all posts in the 4th quarter of the current year.

Post.by_quarter(2, :year => 2012)

This will return all posts in the 2nd quarter of 2012.

Post.by_week(Time.local(2012,1,1))

This will return all posts from the first quarter of 2012.

This method has been shown to be shifty when passed a Date object, it is recommended that you pass it an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone object instead.

To find all posts from the day after the current date:

Post.tomorrow

To find all posts after a given Date or Time object:

Post.tomorrow(Date.today + 2)
Post.tomorrow(Time.now + 5.days)

You can also pass a string:

Post.tomorrow("next tuesday")

This method has been shown to be shifty when passed a Date object, it is recommended that you pass it an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone object instead.

To find all posts from the day before the current date:

Post.yesterday

To find all posts before a given Date or Time object:

Post.yesterday(Date.today + 2)
Post.yesterday(Time.now + 5.days)

You can also pass a string:

Post.yesterday("next tuesday")

To find all posts before the current time:

Post.before

To find all posts before certain time or date:

Post.before(Date.today + 2)
Post.before(Time.now + 5.days)

You can also pass a string:

Post.before("next tuesday")

To find all posts after the current time:

Post.after

To find all posts after certain time or date:

Post.after(Date.today + 2)
Post.after(Time.now + 5.days)

You can also pass a string:

Post.after("next tuesday")

To find records between two times:

Post.between(time1, time2)

Also works with dates:

Post.between(date1, date2)

between_times is an alias for between:

Post.between_times(time1, time2)  #=> results identical to above

To find the record prior to this one call previous on any model instance:

Post.last.previous

You can specify a field also:

Post.last.previous("published_at")

To find the record after this one call next on any model instance:

Post.last.next

You can specify a field also:

Post.last.next("published_at")

If your database uses something other than created_at for storing a timestamp, you can specify the field option like this:

Post.by_month("January", :field => :something_else)

All methods support this extra option.

Or if you're doing it all the time on your model, then it's best to use by_star_field at the top of your model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  by_star_field :something_else
end

Mongoid is only tested/supported on version 3.0+

Thanks to Thomas Sinclair for the original bump for implementing it. I would like to thank #rubyonrails for their support and the following people:

• Mislav Marohnic
• August Lilleas (leethal)
• gte351s
• Sam Elliott (lenary)
• The people who created Chronic
• Erik Fonselius

If you have suggestions, please contact me at [email protected]