Date range based on Date.today

Question

I have an app which is used to calculate the paychecks of a number of employees.

The paychecks are calculated from the 21st in a month to the 20th in the next month. So when the employee uses the app I need to find these two dates (start_date and end_date) based on the date today.

How can I do that? Something like beginning_of_month + 21 doesn't work because when it's the 3rd in a month it's beginning_of_last_month..

Any simple way to find the last 21st date and the next 20th date ?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 23 '13 at 10:40

You could create a helper method that could look something like this:

def paycheck_dates(date, past_day, future_day)
    before, after = Date.civil(date.year, date.month, past_day), Date.civil(date.year, date.month, future_day)
    before <<= 1 if before > date
    after >>= 1 if after < date
    return before, after
end

The operator <<= substracts a month, and >>= adds a month. In your case you could call this method like this:

current_date = Date.today
past_date, future_date = paycheck_dates(current_date, 21, 20)

Date range based on Date.today

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