How to know if today's date is in a date range

Question

I have an event with start_time and end_time and want to check if the event is "in progress". That would be to check if today's date is in the range between the two dates.

How would you do this in a function?

Answer 1

If you are using Rails, you could try this:

ruby-1.8.7-p299 :015 > a = DateTime.now
 => Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:04:24 -0800 
ruby-1.8.7-p299 :016 > (a.beginning_of_day..a.end_of_day).include_with_range? a
 => true 
ruby-1.8.7-p299 :017 > (a.beginning_of_day..a.end_of_day).include_with_range? a+10.days
 => false 
ruby-1.8.7-p299 :018 > (a.beginning_of_day..a.end_of_day).include_with_range? a+25.hours
 => false 
ruby-1.8.7-p299 :019 > (a.beginning_of_day..a.end_of_day).include_with_range? a+2.hours
 => true 

Note: I just used beginning_of_day and end_of_day to provide an easy range. The important part is the include_with_range? method on a Range.

Answer 2

If they're timestamps:

def in_progress?
  (start_time..end_time).include?(Time.now)
end