I''ve been struggling with an adjustment to a rss parsesr (a freelancer built the feature, I''m a newbie working on my own app). The parser needs a conditional which means it will only parse new posts in a feed if they have a date_published which is later than the time at which the Source (the applications model naming convention for a feed URL) was created at, i.e. date_published later than source.created_at. [1] is the original script, [2] is my failed attempt (but maybe it gives you an idea of what I''ve been trying to do); [1] if feed feed.items.each do |item| item_date DateTime.parse(item.date_published.to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") if NewsItem.find(:first, :conditions => {:published_at => item_date, :source_id => source.id}) RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.info("RssReader: Already scraped #{item.url}") else news_item = NewsItem.new( :title => item.title, :url => item.url, :excerpt => item.content..... [2] if feed feed.items.each do |item| item_date DateTime.parse(item.date_published.to_s).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") # the new conditional if item_date < source.created_at RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.info("RssReader: No new NewsItems since the Source was created") elsif NewsItem.find(:first, :conditions => {:published_at => item_date, :source_id => source.id}) RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.info("RssReader: Already scraped #{item.url}") else news_item = NewsItem.new( :title => item.title, :url => item.url, :excerpt => item.content.... Any ideas? I''m presuming the above doesn''t work because it''s a comparison of two strings. However, a friend helped me to try many different types of DateTime.parse and Time.parse on the source.created_at in the conditional, to get a fair comparison of DateTime formats, but none of them worked. We also followed some trial & error by grabbing the output of different DateTime.parse methods in the log, but we couldn''t find one that works (to_i didn''t seem to do it). Is there a Rails ''later_than'' help or a guide to successful DateTime comparisons out there? Or does anyone know the correct approach for this? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---