Get unique array of month and years between two dates - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have two Date objects, for example:
first = Fri, 02 Dec 2016
last = Wed, 01 Mar 2017
What is the most efficient way to get a unique array of months and years between them? In this case I'm after:
Dec 2016
Jan 2017
Feb 2017
Mar 2017

Answer 1

require 'date'
def doit(first, last)
first = first << 1
(12*last.year + last.month - 12*first.year - first.month + 1).
times.map { |i| (first = first >> 1).strftime("%b %Y") }
end
first = Date.parse('Fri, 02 Dec 2016')
last = Date.parse('Wed, 01 Mar 2017')
doit(first, last)
#=> ["Dec 2016", "Jan 2017", "Feb 2017", "Mar 2017"]
Note that
(12*last.year + last.month - 12*first.year - first.month + 1)
equals the number of months covered by the range.

Answer 2

You could create an array of dates, then use strftime to set the correct format, and uniq to avoid repeated values, like this:
(first..last).map{ |date| date.strftime("%b %Y") }.uniq
#=> ["Dec 2016", "Jan 2017", "Feb 2017", "Mar 2017"]

Answer 3

Since user asks for most efficient way (and just for fun) here's a simple benchmark of the proposed solutions:
require 'benchmark'
Benchmark.bmbm(10) do |bm|
bm.report('Cary') do
first = Date.new(1000, 1, 1)
last = Date.new(2100, 1, 1)
def doit(first, last)
(12*last.year + last.month - 12*first.year - first.month).times.map do
first.strftime("%b %Y")
first = first >> 1
end
end
doit(first, last)
end
bm.report('Simple Lime') do
first = Date.new(1000, 1, 1)
last = Date.new(2100, 1, 1)
dates = []
while first.beginning_of_month < last.end_of_month
dates << first.strftime("%b %Y")
first = first.next_month
end
end
bm.report('Máté') do
first = Date.new(1000, 1, 1)
last = Date.new(2100, 1, 1)
(first.beginning_of_month..last).map { |d| d.strftime("%b %Y") if d.day == 1 }.compact
end
bm.report('Gerry/Dan') do
first = Date.new(1000, 1, 1)
last = Date.new(2100, 1, 1)
(first..last).map{ |date| date.strftime("%b %Y") }.uniq
end
end
Results:
Rehearsal -----------------------------------------------
Cary 0.020000 0.000000 0.020000 ( 0.025968)
Simple Lime 0.190000 0.000000 0.190000 ( 0.192860)
Máté 0.460000 0.020000 0.480000 ( 0.481839)
Gerry/Dan 0.810000 0.020000 0.830000 ( 0.835931)
-------------------------------------- total: 1.520000sec
user system total real
Cary 0.020000 0.000000 0.020000 ( 0.024871)
Simple Lime 0.150000 0.000000 0.150000 ( 0.150696)
Máté 0.390000 0.010000 0.400000 ( 0.398637)
Gerry/Dan 0.710000 0.010000 0.720000 ( 0.711155)

Answer 4

Not a pretty one-liner, but also doesn't walk through each day individually so should be a fair bit faster for large ranges.
first = Date.new(2016, 12, 2)
last = Date.new(2017, 3, 1)
dates = []
while first.beginning_of_month < last.end_of_month
dates << first.strftime("%b %Y")
first = first.next_month
end
puts dates.inspect
# => ["Dec 2016", "Jan 2017", "Feb 2017", "Mar 2017"]

Answer 5

Assuming these variables:
first = Date.new(2016, 12, 2)
last = Date.new(2017, 3, 1)
A one-liner solution:
(first.beginning_of_month..last).map { |d| d.strftime("%b %Y") if d.day == 1 }.compact
#=> ["Dec 2016", "Jan 2017", "Feb 2017", "Mar 2017"]

Answer 6

start_date=Date.new(2016,12,2)
end_date=Date.new(2017,3,1)
(start_date..end_date).map{ |d| d.strftime("%b %Y") }.uniq
=> ["Dec 2016", "Jan 2017", "Feb 2017", "Mar 2017"]