Does Ruby have an equivalent to TimeSpan in C#? - ruby

Question

In C# there is a TimeSpan class. It represents a period of time and is returned from many date manipulation options. You can create one and add or subtract from a date etc.
In Ruby and specifically rails there seems to be lots of date and time classes but nothing that represents a span of time?
Ideally I'd like an object that I could use for outputting formatted dates easily enough using the standard date formatting options.
eg.
ts.to_format("%H%M")
Is there such a class?
Even better would be if I could do something like
ts = end_date - start_date
I am aware that subtracting of two dates results in the number of seconds separating said dates and that I could work it all out from that.

Answer 1

You can do something similar like this:
irb(main):001:0> require 'time' => true
irb(main):002:0> initial = Time.now => Tue Jun 19 08:19:56 -0400 2012
irb(main):003:0> later = Time.now => Tue Jun 19 08:20:05 -0400 2012
irb(main):004:0> span = later - initial => 8.393871
irb(main):005:0>
This just returns a time in seconds which isn't all that pretty to look at, you can use the strftime() function to make it look pretty:
irb(main):010:0> Time.at(span).gmtime.strftime("%H:%M:%S") => "00:00:08"

Answer 2

Something like this? https://github.com/abhidsm/time_diff
require 'time_diff'
time_diff_components = Time.diff(start_date_time, end_date_time)

Answer 3

No, it doesn't. You can just add seconds or use advance method.
end_date - start_date will have Float type

Answer 4

In the end I forked the suggestion in #tokland's answer. Not quite sure how to make it a proper gem but it's currently working for me:
Timespan fork of time_diff

Answer 5

Not yet #toxaq... but I've started something!
https://gist.github.com/thatandyrose/6180560
class TimeSpan
attr_accessor :milliseconds
def self.from_milliseconds(milliseconds)
me = TimeSpan.new
me.milliseconds = milliseconds
return me
end
def self.from_seconds(seconds)
TimeSpan.from_milliseconds(seconds.to_d * 1000)
end
def self.from_minutes(minutes)
TimeSpan.from_milliseconds(minutes.to_d * 60000)
end
def self.from_hours(hours)
TimeSpan.from_milliseconds(hours.to_d * 3600000)
end
def self.from_days(days)
TimeSpan.from_milliseconds(days.to_d * 86400000)
end
def self.from_years(years)
TimeSpan.from_days(years.to_d * 365.242)
end
def self.diff(start_date_time, end_date_time)
TimeSpan.from_seconds(end_date_time - start_date_time)
end
def seconds
self.milliseconds.to_d * 0.001
end
def minutes
self.seconds.to_d * 0.0166667
end
def hours
self.minutes.to_d * 0.0166667
end
def days
self.hours.to_d * 0.0416667
end
def years
self.days.to_d * 0.00273791
end
end