Rails - Mar 2006 - getting holiday dates?

Hi, i''m writing a timesheet application in which i need to know when
the
holidays are, (bank holidays, etc)

Is there a very clever way of getting this info that wouldnt require me 
to manually add it to my database??

Thanks
Chris

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 12:20:43PM +0100, Chris wrote:
} Hi, i''m writing a timesheet application in which i need to know when
the
} holidays are, (bank holidays, etc)
} 
} Is there a very clever way of getting this info that wouldnt require me 
} to manually add it to my database??

You could retrieve and parse an ical file. Search icalshare.com for a
suitable one.

} Thanks
} Chris
--Greg

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 12:20:43PM +0100, Chris wrote:
> Hi, i''m writing a timesheet application in which i need to know
when the
> holidays are, (bank holidays, etc)
> 
> Is there a very clever way of getting this info that wouldnt require me 
> to manually add it to my database??
It depends on which set of holidays you''re interested in.  For US
Government holidays, it''s pretty simple:  there are fixed and floating
holidays.  The floating holidays fall on the n-th weekday of the
month, so the third Monday in January for MLK day, the last Monday in
May for Memorial day, and so forth.

holiday-float  1  1  3 "Martin Luther King Day"
holiday-float  2  1  3 "President''s Day"
holiday-float  5  1 -1 "Memorial Day"
holiday-float  9  1  1 "Labor Day"
holiday-float 10  1  2 "Columbus Day"
holiday-float 11  4  4 "Thanksgiving"

Then there are the fixed holidays, which nominally fall on the same
day each year: January first for New Year''s day, July forth for the
forth of July, and so forth.  The only trick here is that if this day
falls on a weekend, it gets celebrated on the nearest Friday or Monday.

holiday-fixed  1  1    "New Year''s Day"
holiday-fixed  7  4    "Independence Day"
holiday-fixed 11 11    "Veteran''s Day"
holiday-fixed 12 25    "Christmas"

For a bizarrely complete treatment of this subject, see the
calendar.el file from a recent distribution of Emacs.  These, and a
huge array of holidays that you''ve never heard of, much less
celebrated, are all covered in detail.

-- John Kodis.

In Perl i often used a BusinessDay module (CPAN) for that, which  
incorporated holidays as well. Would be nice if Rails had something  
like:

10.business_days.from_now

where business_days are days counted excluding Sat/Su but also  
excluding holidays (w/ localized settings, of course). Maybe this  
already exists as a plug-in?? In any case, this would be very useful  
for a range of apps.

Sebastian


On Mar 8, 2006, at 4:06 PM, John Kodis wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 12:20:43PM +0100, Chris wrote:
>> Hi, i''m writing a timesheet application in which i need to
know
>> when the
>> holidays are, (bank holidays, etc)
>>
>> Is there a very clever way of getting this info that wouldnt  
>> require me
>> to manually add it to my database??
>
> It depends on which set of holidays you''re interested in.  For US
> Government holidays, it''s pretty simple:  there are fixed and
floating
> holidays.  The floating holidays fall on the n-th weekday of the
> month, so the third Monday in January for MLK day, the last Monday in
> May for Memorial day, and so forth.
>
> holiday-float  1  1  3 "Martin Luther King Day"
> holiday-float  2  1  3 "President''s Day"
> holiday-float  5  1 -1 "Memorial Day"
> holiday-float  9  1  1 "Labor Day"
> holiday-float 10  1  2 "Columbus Day"
> holiday-float 11  4  4 "Thanksgiving"
>
> Then there are the fixed holidays, which nominally fall on the same
> day each year: January first for New Year''s day, July forth for
the
> forth of July, and so forth.  The only trick here is that if this day
> falls on a weekend, it gets celebrated on the nearest Friday or  
> Monday.
>
> holiday-fixed  1  1    "New Year''s Day"
> holiday-fixed  7  4    "Independence Day"
> holiday-fixed 11 11    "Veteran''s Day"
> holiday-fixed 12 25    "Christmas"
>
> For a bizarrely complete treatment of this subject, see the
> calendar.el file from a recent distribution of Emacs.  These, and a
> huge array of holidays that you''ve never heard of, much less
> celebrated, are all covered in detail.
>
> -- John Kodis.
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