How to parse days/hours/minutes/seconds in ruby?

Question

Is there a gem or something to parse strings like \"4h 30m\" \"1d 4h\" -- sort of like the estimates in JIRA or task planners, maybe, with internationalization?

Answer 1

Posting a 2nd answer, as chronic (which my original answer suggested) doesn't give you timespans but timestamps.

Here's my go on a parser.

class TimeParser
  TOKENS = {
    "m" => (60),
    "h" => (60 * 60),
    "d" => (60 * 60 * 24)
  }

  attr_reader :time

  def initialize(input)
    @input = input
    @time = 0
    parse
  end

  def parse
    @input.scan(/(\d+)(\w)/).each do |amount, measure|
      @time += amount.to_i * TOKENS[measure]
    end
  end
end

The strategy is fairly simple. Split "5h" into ["5", "h"], define how many seconds "h" represents (TOKENS), and add that amount to @time.

TimeParser.new("1m").time
# => 60

TimeParser.new("1m wtf lol").time
# => 60

TimeParser.new("4h 30m").time
# => 16200

TimeParser.new("1d 4h").time
# => 100800

It shouldn't be too hard making it handle "1.5h" either, seeing the codebase is as simple as it is.