Ruby/Rails: Converting datetime to natural language (e.g. 3/23/2012 to “this Friday”)

Question

Is anyone aware of a gem, method, or code snippet that will convert datetime values into sometime more human-friendly without having to create a series of rules or put a bun

Answer 1

This is a little hack, totally unfinished and inelegant. But Ruby/Rails is so awesome with dates, and ranges are so perfect, maybe if you don't find the gem, something like this will get you started:

module HumanDate
  def date_difference_for_people (from, to)
    seconds_in_day = 24 * 60 * 60
    days_difference = ((to - from)/seconds_in_day).round
    case days_difference
      when -1
        "yesterday"
      when 0
        "today"
      when 1
        "tomorrow"
      when 2..days_left_in_week
        "this #{day_name(difference)}"
      when (days_left_in_week + 1)..(days_left_in_week + 7)
        "next week"
      when (days_left_in_week + 8)..days_left_in_month
        "later this month"
      else
        "later -- how much left to you :-)"
    end
  end

  def day_name(days_from_now)
    days_from_now.days_from_now.strftime("%A")
  end

  def days_left_in_month
    Time.now.end_of_month.day - Time.now.day
  end

  def days_left_in_week
    Time.now.end_of_week.day - Time.now.day
  end
end