Hill, Ronald schreef:
> I wanted to ask the group about an idea I have for an article for the
> perl review. This would be a beginner/newbie article on basic usage
> of DateTime. I have put together some ideas starting with getting things
> into/out of DateTime and comparing dates. Any other ideas for the article?
> I want to keep is simple as possible.
Here are some comments; of course, feel free to ignore everything I say.
* I would remove the from_epoch description. It is not that important
for beginners, especially because the particular example you give
(from_epoch => time()) doesn't add anything to DateTime->now.
* Keep the first example as simple as possible: remove the nanosecond
parameter, and possibly the timezone.
* Show a few output methods; ymd(), mdy() and dmy(); hms(); datetime()
come to mind.
* When you introduce timezones, show a conversion like
$dt1 = DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 8, day => 26,
hour => 21, time_zone => 'America/Chicago' );
# What time is it in Helsinki, when it is 9pm in Chicago?
$dt2 = $dt1->clone->set_time_zone( 'Europe/Helsinki' );
print $dt2->datetime, "\n";
* You might want to show some date math:
$dt1 = DateTime->now();
# One week ago:
$dt2 = $dt1->clone->subtract( weeks => 1);
print $dt2->datetime, "\n";
* "One of the big problems in handling dates is Summertime (aka Daylight
Saving Time). DateTime can do it all for you."
$dt1->DateTime->new( .. insert date just before DST here .. );
$dt1->add( hours => 10 );
print $dt1->datetime, "\n"; prints "2003-03-xxT11:00:00"!
And then say something like "DateTime knows the DST rules of avery
country in the world."
* When you're showing the Fromat modules, it might be more instructive
to convert to another format, instead of parsing and formatting a HTTP
date. I suggest you use DT::F::ISO8601 or ::MySQL->format_datetime.
Eugene
