Rails - Sep 2005 - Design/Ruby Question: How best to activate items for display based on to from dates and day of week

I have an application that allows for items to be ''active'' or
''selectable'' by the user for a given date range.  To
complicate
matters, there is often an item that is ''active'' or
''selectable'' only
on weekends and holidays _or_ conversely items that should only be
available for selection on business days.

Any ideas on how best to implement this, both from a database
perspective and a ruby perspective(any ruby magic??).

I have in the past forced the admin user to enter every single
discrete date range and item combination.  This has proven to be very
tedious on the admin user and wicked crazy when building the SQL to
return the items in a category that are ''active'' on a
particular day.

I would hate to recreate the problems I had in this earlier app in my
new web 2.0 version.

Thoughts?

Ken

Hello Ken,

Ken Barker said the following on 2005-09-06 22:29:
> I have an application that allows for items to be
''active'' or
> ''selectable'' by the user for a given date range.  To
complicate
> matters, there is often an item that is ''active'' or
''selectable'' only
> on weekends and holidays _or_ conversely items that should only be
> available for selection on business days.
> 
[snip]
> Thoughts?
Yup, in the DB, keep the discrete time ranges.  In the UI layer, ask for 
anything - date range with weekends only, and convert from that to 
discrete date ranges.

The SQL is super easy, and the hardest part is parsing what the user 
wants.  In fact, your UI becomes some kind of domain language for 
specifying date ranges.

Hope that helps !
François