Active Support is a set of libraries that are shared by all Rails components.
Much of what’s in there is intended for Rails internal use. However, Active
Support also extends some of Ruby’s built-in classes in interesting and
useful ways. In this section we’ll quickly list the most popular of these
extensions.
Extensions to Numbers
Class Fixnum gains the two instance methods even? and odd?.
All numeric objects gain a set of scaling methods.
puts 20.bytes #=> 20
puts 20.kilobytes #=> 20480
puts 20.megabytes #=> 20971520
puts 20.gigabytes #=> 21474836480
puts 20.terabytes #=> 21990232555520
There are also time-based scaling methods. These convert their receiver
into the equivalent number of seconds. The months( ) and years( ) methods
are approximations—months are assumed to be 30 days long, years 365
days long.
puts 20.minutes #=> 1200
puts 20.hours #=> 72000
puts 20.days #=> 1728000
puts 20.weeks #=> 12096000
puts 20.fortnights #=> 24192000
puts 20.months #=> 51840000
puts 20.years #=> 630720000
You can also calculate times relative to Time.now using the methods ago( )
and from_now( ) (or their aliases until( ) and since( ), respectively).
puts Time.now #=> Tue May 10 17:03:43 CDT 2005
puts 20.minutes.ago #=> Tue May 10 16:43:43 CDT 2005
puts 20.hours.from_now #=> Wed May 11 13:03:43 CDT 2005
puts 20.weeks.from_now #=> Tue Sep 27 17:03:43 CDT 2005
puts 20.months.ago #=> Thu Sep 18 17:03:43 CDT 2003
How cool is that?
Time Extensions
The Time class gains a number of useful methods, helping you calculate
relative times.
now = Time.now
puts now #=> Tue May 10 17:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.ago(3600) #=> Tue May 10 16:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.at_beginning_of_day #=> Tue May 10 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.at_beginning_of_month #=> Sun May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.at_beginning_of_week #=> Mon May 09 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.at_beginning_of_year #=> Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2005
puts now.at_midnight #=> Tue May 10 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.change(:hour => 13) #=> Tue May 10 13:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.last_month #=> Sun Apr 10 17:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.last_year #=> Mon May 10 17:15:59 CDT 2004
puts now.midnight #=> Tue May 10 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.monday #=> Mon May 09 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.months_ago(2) #=> Thu Mar 10 17:15:59 CST 2005
puts now.months_since(2) #=> Sun Jul 10 17:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.next_week #=> Mon May 16 00:00:00 CDT 2005
puts now.next_year #=> Wed May 10 17:15:59 CDT 2006
puts now.seconds_since_midnight #=> 62159.215938
puts now.since(7200) #=> Tue May 10 19:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.tomorrow #=> Wed May 11 17:15:59 CDT 2005
puts now.years_ago(2) #=> Sat May 10 17:15:59 CDT 2003
puts now.years_since(2) #=> Thu May 10 17:15:59 CDT 2007
puts now.yesterday #=> Mon May 09 17:15:59 CDT 2005
Active Support also includes a TimeZone class. TimeZone objects encapsulate
the names and offset of a time zone. The class contains a list of the
world’s time zones. See the Active Support RDoc for details.
String Extensions
Active Support adds methods to all strings to support the way the Rails
core converts names from singular to plural, lowercase to mixed case, and
so on. Of these, two might be useful in the average application.
puts "cat".pluralize #=> cats
puts "cats".pluralize #=> cats
puts "erratum".pluralize #=> errata
puts "cats".singularize #=> cat
puts "errata".singularize #=> erratum