Time In Ruby

The Time class represents dates and times in Ruby. It is a thin layer over the system date and time functionality provided by the operating system. This class may be unable on your system to represent dates before 1970 or after 2038.

time1 = Time.new

puts "Current Time : " + time1.inspect

# Time.now is a synonym:
time2 = Time.now
puts "Current Time : " + time2.inspect

Current Time : Mon Jun 02 12:02:39 -0700 2008
Current Time : Mon Jun 02 12:02:39 -0700 2008

time = Time.new

# Components of a Time
puts "Current Time : " + time.inspect
puts time.year    # => Year of the date 
puts time.month   # => Month of the date (1 to 12)
puts time.day     # => Day of the date (1 to 31 )
puts time.wday    # => 0: Day of week: 0 is Sunday
puts time.yday    # => 365: Day of year
puts time.hour    # => 23: 24-hour clock
puts time.min     # => 59
puts time.sec     # => 59
puts time.usec    # => 999999: microseconds
puts time.zone    # => "UTC": timezone name

Current Time : Mon Jun 02 12:03:08 -0700 2008
2008
6
2
1
154
12
3
8
247476
UTC

time = Time.new

puts time.to_s
puts time.ctime
puts time.localtime
puts time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

This will produce the following result:

Mon Jun 02 12:35:19 -0700 2008
Mon Jun  2 12:35:19 2008
Mon Jun 02 12:35:19 -0700 2008
2008-06-02 12:35:19

Directive	Description
%a	The abbreviated weekday name (Sun).
%A	The full weekday name (Sunday).
%b	The abbreviated month name (Jan).
%B	The full month name (January).
%c	The preferred local date and time representation.
%d	Day of the month (01 to 31).
%H	Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00 to 23).
%I	Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01 to 12).
%j	Day of the year (001 to 366).
%m	Month of the year (01 to 12).
%M	Minute of the hour (00 to 59).
%p	Meridian indicator (AM or PM).
%S	Second of the minute (00 to 60).
%U	Week number of the current year, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of the first week (00 to 53).
%W	Week number of the current year, starting with the first Monday as the first day of the first week (00 to 53).
%w	Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0 to 6).
%x	Preferred representation for the date alone, no time.
%X	Preferred representation for the time alone, no date.
%y	Year without a century (00 to 99).
%Y	Year with century.
%Z	Time zone name.
%%	Literal % character.

Time arithmetic:

You can do simple arithmetic with time as follows:

now = Time.now           # Current time
puts now

past = now - 10          # 10 seconds ago. Time - number => Time
puts past

future = now + 10        # 10 seconds from now Time + number => Time
puts future

diff = future - now      # => 10  Time - Time => number of seconds
puts diff

This will produce the following result:

Thu Aug 01 20:57:05 -0700 2013
Thu Aug 01 20:56:55 -0700 2013
Thu Aug 01 20:57:15 -0700 2013
10.0

distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, to_time)
time_ago_in_words(from_time)