Iterate every month with date objects

Question

So I have two ruby Date objects, and I want to iterate them every month. For example if I have Date.new(2008, 12) and Date.new(2009, 3), it would yield me 2008-12, 2009-1, 2009-

Answer 1

As a helper method:

def iterate(d1, d2)
  date = d1
  while date <= d2
    yield date
    date = date >> 1
  end
end

Usage:

start_date = Date.new(2008, 12)
end_date = Date.new(2009, 3)
iterate(start_date, end_date){|date| puts date}

Or, if you prefer to monkey patch Date:

class Date
  def upto(end_date)
    date = self
    while date <= end_date
      yield date
      date = date >> 1
    end
  end
end

Usage:

start_date = Date.new(2008, 12)
end_date = Date.new(2009, 3)
start_date.upto(end_date){|date| puts date}