Gostradamus: Better DateTimes for Go

Introduction

Gostradamus is a Go library that offers a lightweight and human-friendly way to create, transform, format, and parse datetimes. It uses the underlying Go time library and the main gostradamus' type DateTime can be easily converted to and from time.Time.

Gostradamus is named after the french pharmacist Nostradamus. He is known for his prophecies, therefore he worked a lot with time, like Gostradamus.

Features

✅ Easy conversion between time.Time and gostradamus.DateTime

✅ Format with common and known format tokens like YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss

✅ Generates time spans, floors, ceilings from second to year (weeks included)

✅ Weeks manipulation and helper functions

✅ Timezone-aware with conversion

✅ Fully tested and ready for production

Basic Usage

package main

import "github.com/bykof/gostradamus"

func main() {
    // Easy parsing
    dateTime, err := gostradamus.Parse("14.07.2017 02:40:00", "DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    
    // Easy manipulation 
    dateTime = dateTime.ShiftMonths(-5).ShiftDays(2)
    
    // Easy formatting
    println(dateTime.Format("DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss"))
    // 16.02.2017 02:40:00
    
    // Easy helper functions
    start, end := dateTime.SpanWeek()
    
    println(start.String(), end.String())
    // 2017-02-13T00:00:00.000000Z 2017-02-19T23:59:59.999999Z
}

Table of Contents

• Types
• Conversion between time.Time and gostradamus.DateTime
• Creation
• Timezones
• Shift
• Replace
• Token Table
• Parsing
• Formatting
• Floor
• Ceil
• Spans
• Utils
  • IsBetween
  • IsoCalendar
• Contribution
• License

Usage

This part introduces all basic features of gostradamus. Surely there are more, just look them up in the offical documentation.

Types

There are two types in this package, which are important to know:

type DateTime time.Time
type Timezone string

DateTime contains all the creation, transforming, formatting and parsing functions.

Timezone is just a string type but gostradamus has all timezones defined as constants. Look here.

Conversion between time.Time and gostradamus.DateTime

You can easily convert between gostradamus.DateTime and time.Time package. Either with helper functions or with golang's type conversion

import "time"

// From gostradamus.DateTime to time.Time
dateTime := gostradamus.Now()
firstTime := dateTime.Time()
secondTime := time.Time(dateTime)

// From time.Time to gostradamus.DateTime
t := time.Now()
dateTime = gostradamus.DateTimeFromTime(t)
dateTime = gostradamus.DateTime(t)

Creation

If you want to create a gostradamus.DateTime you have several ways:

Just create the DateTime from scratch:

// Create it with a defined timezone as you know it
dateTime := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0, gostradamus.EuropeBerlin)

// Create it with predefined UTC timezone
dateTime := gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0)

// Create it with local timzone
dateTime := gostradamus.NewLocalDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0)

Or create a DateTime from an ISO-8601 format:

dateTime := gostradamus.Parse("2017-07-14T02:40:00.000000+0200", gostradamus.Iso8601)

Or from a custom format:

dateTime := gostradamus.Parse("10.02.2010 14:59:53", "DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss")

Or an UNIX timestamp for example:

dateTime := gostradamus.FromUnixTimestamp(1500000000)

Or different ways of the current datetime:

// Current DateTime in local timezone
dateTime := gostradamus.Now()

// Current DateTime in UTC timezone
dateTime = gostradamus.UTCNow()

// Current DateTime in given timezone
dateTime = gostradamus.NowInTimezone(gostradamus.EuropeParis)

Timezones

Feel free to use all available timezones, defined here:

gostradamus.EuropeParis // Europe/Paris
gostradamus.EuropeBerlin // Europe/Berlin
gostradamus.AmericaNewYork // America/New_York
... and many more

Convert between timezones easily:

dateTime := gostradamus.NewUTC(2020, 1, 1, 12, 12, 12, 0).InTimezone(gostradamus.EuropeBerlin)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2020-02-15T13:12:12.000000+0100

dateTime = dateTime.InTimeZone(America_New_York)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2020-02-15T07:12:12.000000-0500

Shift

Shifting helps you to add or subtract years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds, microseconds, and nanoseconds.

To add a value use positive integer, to subtract use negative integer.

dateTime := gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.ShiftYears(10)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2030-01-01T01:01:01.000000+0000

dateTime = gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.ShiftDays(-10)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2019-12-22T01:01:01.000000+0000

dateTime = gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.ShiftWeeks(2)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2020-01-15T01:01:01.000000+0000

dateTime = gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.Shift(0, 1, 10, 0, 0, 0, 0)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2020-02-11T01:01:01.000000+0000

Replace

Replacing values can be done easily.

dateTime := gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.ReplaceYear(2010)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2010-01-01T01:01:01.000000+0000

dateTime = gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
dateTime = dateTime.ReplaceYear(2010).ReplaceMonth(2)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2010-02-01T01:01:01.000000+0000

Token Table

Parsing

Please consider that you cannot put custom tokens or custom letters into the parsing string

Easily parse with Parse:

dateTime, err := gostradamus.Parse("10.02.2010 14:59:53", "DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss")
println(dateTime.String())
// 2010-02-10T14:59:53.000000Z

You can also specify a timezone while parsing:

dateTime, err := gostradamus.ParseInTimezone("10.02.2010 14:59:53", "DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm:ss", gostradamus.EuropeBerlin)
println(dateTime.String())
// 2010-02-10T14:59:53.000000+0100

Formatting

Formatting is as easy as parsing:

dateTimeString := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).Format("DD.MM.YYYY Time: HH:mm:ss")
println(dateTimeString)
// 14.07.2017 Time: 02:40:00

Floor

dateTimeString := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).FloorDay()
println(dateTimeString.String())
// 2017-07-14T00:00:00.000000Z

dateTimeString := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).FlorHour()
println(dateTimeString.String())
// 2017-07-14T02:00:00.000000Z

Ceil

dateTimeString := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).CeilMonth()
println(dateTimeString.String())
// 2017-07-31T23:59:59.999999Z

dateTimeString := gostradamus.NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).CeilSecond()
println(dateTimeString.String())
// 2017-07-14T02:40:00.999999Z

Spans

Spans can help you to get quickly the current span of the month or the day:

start, end := NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).SpanMonth()
println(start.String())
// 2017-07-01T00:00:00.000000Z
println(end.String())
// 2017-07-31T23:59:59.999999Z

start, end = NewDateTime(2017, 7, 14, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).SpanDay()
println(start.String())
// 2017-07-14T00:00:00.000000Z
println(end.String())
// 2017-07-14T23:59:59.999999Z

start, end = NewDateTime(2012, 12, 12, 2, 40, 0, 0, UTC).SpanWeek()
println(start.String())
// 2012-12-10T00:00:00.000000Z
println(end.String())
// 2012-12-16T23:59:59.999999Z

Utils

Here is the section for some nice helper functions that will save you some time.

IsBetween

isBetween := gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0).IsBetween(
	gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 11, 0, 0, 0),
    gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 13, 0, 0, 0), 
)
println(isBetween)
// true

isBetween = gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0).IsBetween(
    gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 13, 0, 0, 0),
    gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 14, 0, 0, 0),
)
println(isBetween)
// false

IsoCalendar

Retrieve year, month, day directly as a 3-tuple:

year, month, day := gostradamus.NewUTCDateTime(2020, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0).IsoCalendar()
println(year, month, day)
// 2020 1 1

Contribution

Do you have an idea to improve Gostradamus? -> Create an issue

Do you have already coded something for Gostradamus? -> Create a pull request.

Did you discover a bug? -> Create an issue

Otherwise feel free to contact me: [email protected] or visit my webpage: bykovski.de

License

MIT licensed. See the LICENSE file for details.