stephenrichards-holiday_calendar

== HolidayCalendar

HolidayCalendar is a library for determining public holidays in different countries.

Its main features are:

* Can load standard holiday calendars for UK (England), France, U.S. Federal Holidays

* Can determine whether or not a particular day is a public holiday

* Can return the name of a public holiday for a particular date

* Can determine whether or not a date is a weekend

* Can determine whether or not a date is a working day (i.e. not a weekend nor a public holiday)

* Can determine the number of working days between two dates

* Can determine the date a specified number of working days before or after a specified date

* Users can define public holidays for other territories and add them into the calendar

== Overview

The library is made up of two main elements:

* PublicHolidaySpecification

* HolidayCalendar

A PublicHolidaySpecification defines the name of the holiday, which years it applies to, when

it is taken (e.g. 25th December or third Thursday in November), and what to do if it falls on

a weekend (ee.g. nothing, take it the last working day before, take it the next working day after).

A HolidayCalendar has a name (the territory for which it is valid), defines which days are weekends,

and contains an array of PublicHolidaySpecifications. Given this data, the status of any date can be generated.

A HolidayCalendar can be instantiated from the standard configurations distributed with this library, from a yaml

file provided by the user, or from an array of PublicHolidaySpecification objects.

== Example

This example loads the UK standard public holidays from the yaml file distributed with this gem.

It then loads a second copy, but modifies it for Scotland by removing the Boxing Day holiday and adding a 2nd January holiday.

Finally, various calls are made agains the two calendars.

require 'holiday_calendar'

en = HolidayCalendar.load(:uk)

sco = HolidayCalendar.load(:uk)

sco.delete('Boxing Day')

sco << PublicHolidaySpecification.new(:name => "2nd Jan", :years => :all, :month => 1, :day => 2, :take_after => [:saturday, :sunday])

dates = [

Date.new(2009,12,25),

Date.new(2009,12,26),

Date.new(2009,12,27),

Date.new(2009,12,28),

Date.new(2010,1,1),

Date.new(2010,1,4)

]

dates.each do |date|

if en.public_holiday?(date)

puts "#{date} is a public holiday in England: #{en.holiday_name(date)}"

end

if sco.public_holiday?(date)

puts "#{date} is a public holiday in Scotland: #{sco.holiday_name(date)}"

end

end

puts "\n\nScottish Holidays in 2010"

puts "==========================="

hols = sco.list_for_year(2010)

hols.each { |h| puts h }

== Feedback

Feedback on this project is welcomed, particularly sets of rules for different countries, or useful additions.

please mail me at [e-mail]

Stephen Richards