Age of person - ActiveSupport

Rails
1

I’ve got a datetime column in my database for a person’s age. How would
I be able to calculate the number of years they are from the DB date to
current time? I’ve looked at ActiveSupport and tried a few ways but
can’t figure it out. Anyone have any ideas on the best way to implement
this?

2

Hi Justin,

Where do you want to use this calculations?
if you want to use it in a view, you can use the
distance_of_time_in_words_to_now.

if you want to use it in a controller, well this is a problem i have
also… all the text helpers does not work with the an ActiveSupport
elements.

3

I tried the ‘time_ago_in_words’ helper method but it comes up as ‘over 4
years’ when what I need is the approximate number of years. Any idea on
how to get the method to display the exact number(integer) of years?

Thanks for the help!

4

Aw, works perfect. Thanks!

5

Justin Ko wrote:

I’ve got a datetime column in my database for a person’s age. How would
I be able to calculate the number of years they are from the DB date to
current time? I’ve looked at ActiveSupport and tried a few ways but
can’t figure it out. Anyone have any ideas on the best way to implement
this?

In my Rails app I do it like this:

def age
((Time.now - birthday)/(606024)/365.2422).to_i
end

Cheers,
Jørgen

6

Elad M. - Creopolis.com wrote:

this will not work?

def age (time)
return (DateTime.now - time).years
end

Nope. Can you?

7

this will not work?

def age (time)
return (DateTime.now - time).years
end

8

Justin Ko wrote:

Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
This is probably overkill if this is the only unit based math you want
to do but…

gem install ruby-units

require ‘ruby-units’
age = ‘years’.since(birthday) # where birthday is either a Time,
DateTime, or string of a date

if you install and require the ‘Chronic’ gem, you can pass all sorts of
funky stuff…

require ‘chronic’
‘days’.until ‘monday’ #=> 1.48601 days

_Kevin

9

Yes, for now this is the only unit based math I need. I’ll definately
remember those gems for future features though. Thanks!