Contents

= Chronic Duration

A simple Ruby natural language parser for elapsed time. (For example, 4 hours and 30 minutes, 6 minutes 4 seconds, 3 days, etc.) Returns all results in seconds. Will return an integer unless you get tricky and need a float. (4 minutes and 13.47 seconds, for example.) 

The reverse can also be accomplished with the output method.  So pass in seconds and you can get strings like 4 mins 31.51 secs (default  format), 4h 3m 30s, or 4:01:29.

== Installation

    $ sudo gem sources -a http://gemcutter.org
    $ sudo gem install chronic_duration

== Usage

    >> require 'chronic_duration'
    => true
    >> ChronicDuration.parse('4 minutes and 30 seconds')
    => 270
    >> ChronicDuration.output(270)
    => 4 mins 30 secs
    >> ChronicDuration.output(270, :format => :short)
    => 4m 30s
    >> ChronicDuration.output(270, :format => :long)
    => 4 minutes 30 seconds
    >> ChronicDuration.output(270, :format => :chrono)
    => 4:30
    
Nil is returned if the string can't be parsed

Examples of parse-able strings:

* '12.4 secs'
* '1:20' 
* '1:20.51'
* '4:01:01'
* '3 mins 4 sec'
* '2 hrs 20 min'
* '2h20min'
* '6 mos 1 day'
* '47 yrs 6 mos and 4d'
* 'two hours and twenty minutes'
* '3 weeks and 2 days'

ChronicDuration.raise_exceptions can be set to true to raise exceptions when the string can't be parsed.

    >> ChronicDuration.raise_exceptions = true
    => true
    >> ChronicDuration.parse('4 elephants and 3 Astroids')
    ChronicDuration::DurationParseError: An invalid word "elephants" was used in the string to be parsed.

    
== Contributors

brianjlandau, jduff, olauzon, roboman, ianlevesque
    
== TODO

* Benchmark, optimize
* Context specific matching (E.g., for '4m30s', assume 'm' is minutes not months)
* Smartly parse vacation-like durations (E.g., '4 days and 3 nights')
* :chrono output option should probably change to something like 4 days 4:00:12 instead of 4:04:00:12
* Other locale support

Version data entries

2 entries across 2 versions & 2 rubygems

Version	Path
arturop-chronic_duration-0.9.7	README.rdoc
chronic_duration-0.9.6	README.rdoc