This latest version of the gem works with ActiveSupport 5.1. For prior version, check out v0.6.x-activesupport42

TimeDifference

TimeDifference is the missing Ruby method to calculate difference between two given time. You can do a Ruby time difference in year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and seconds.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'time_difference'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Usage

Works for Time, DateTime, and Date

# Time
start_time = Time.new(2013,1)
end_time = Time.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_years
=> 1.0

# DateTime
start_time = DateTime.new(2013,1)
end_time = DateTime.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_years
=> 1.0

# Date
start_time = Date.new(2013,1)
end_time = Date.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_years
=> 1.0

Get the time difference in various units

start_time = Time.new(2013,1)
end_time = Time.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_years
=> 1.0

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_months
=> 12.0

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_weeks
=> 52.14 

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_days
=> 365.0 

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_hours
=> 8760.0

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_minutes
=> 525600.0

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_seconds
=> 31536000.0 

Get the time difference in each component

start_time = Time.new(2013,1)
end_time = Time.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_each_component
=> {:years=>1.0, :months=>12.0, :weeks=>52.14, :days=>365.0, :hours=>8760.0, :minutes=>525600.0, :seconds=>31536000.0}

If you would like an overall estimated time component, use in_general (not that accurate)

start_time = Time.new(2013,1)
end_time = Time.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).in_general
=> {:years=>0, :months=>12, :weeks=>0, :days=>5, :hours=>0, :minutes=>0, :seconds=>0}

You can also get in_general as a human readable string, using humanize

start_time = Time.new(2013,1)
end_time = Time.new(2014,1)

TimeDifference.between(start_time, end_time).humanize
=> "12 Months and 5 Days"

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request