What's the best way to model recurring events in a calendar application?

Question

I\'m building a group calendar application that needs to support recurring events, but all the solutions I\'ve come up with to handle these events seem like a hack. I can li

Answer 1

I'd recommend using the power of the date library and the semantics of the range module of ruby. A recurring event is really a time, a date range (a start & end) and usually a single day of the week. Using date & range you can answer any question:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'date'

start_date = Date.parse('2008-01-01')
end_date   = Date.parse('2008-04-01')
wday = 5 # friday

(start_date..end_date).select{|d| d.wday == wday}.map{|d| d.to_s}.inspect

Produces all days of the event, including the leap year!

# =>"[\"2008-01-04\", \"2008-01-11\", \"2008-01-18\", \"2008-01-25\", \"2008-02-01\", \"2008-02-08\", \"2008-02-15\", \"2008-02-22\", \"2008-02-29\", \"2008-03-07\", \"2008-03-14\", \"2008-03-21\", \"2008-03-28\"]"