Rails - Jan 2006 - Method for returning a random date between two dates

Hi,

I''m trying to create a method to return a random date within a range. 
So far, I''ve come up with this...

  require ''parsedate''
  def random_date (a, b)
  	adate	=	ParseDate.parsedate(a)
  	bdate	=	ParseDate.parsedate(b)
  	atime	=	Time.local(*adate)
  	btime	=	Time.local(*bdate)
  	atime + (rand * (atime - btime) )
  end

...and it doesn''t seem to work--the dates returned aren''t
within the
given range.

Can anyone spot what I''m doing wrong, or maybe is there a better way to
do this?

Best,

Jacob

-
Jacob Patton
Trisignia
http://trisignia.com/
ph: 202-309-1047

Am Samstag, den 28.01.2006, 11:56 -0500 schrieb Jacob
Patton:
>   require ''parsedate''
>   def random_date (a, b)
>   	adate	=	ParseDate.parsedate(a)
>   	bdate	=	ParseDate.parsedate(b)
>   	atime	=	Time.local(*adate)
>   	btime	=	Time.local(*bdate)
>   	atime + (rand * (atime - btime) )
>   end
> 
> ...and it doesn''t seem to work--the dates returned aren''t
within the
> given range.
> 
> Can anyone spot what I''m doing wrong, or maybe is there a better
way to do this?
I think you should do (btime - atime) to get the days between those
dates.

def random_date_between(from, till)
  from = Date.parse(from) unless from.is_a? Date
  till = Date.parse(till) unless till.is_a? Date
  from + rand(till - from)
end

-- 
Norman Timmler

http://blog.inlet-media.de