NAME
Time::Tiny - A time object, with as little code as possible
SYNOPSIS
# Create a time manually
$christmas = Time::Tiny->new(
hour => 10,
minute => 45,
second => 0,
);
# Show the current time
$now = Time::Tiny->now;
print "Hour : " . $now->hour . "\n";
print "Minute : " . $now->minute . "\n";
print "Second : " . $now->second . "\n";
DESCRIPTION
Time::Tiny is a member of the DateTime::Tiny suite of time modules.
It implements an extremely lightweight object that represents a time,
without any time data.
The Tiny Mandate
Many CPAN modules which provide the best implementation of a concept can
be very large. For some reason, this generally seems to be about 3
megabyte of ram usage to load the module.
For a lot of the situations in which these large and comprehensive
implementations exist, some people will only need a small fraction of
the functionality, or only need this functionality in an ancillary role.
The aim of the Tiny modules is to implement an alternative to the large
module that implements a subset of the functionality, using as little
code as possible.
Typically, this means a module that implements between 50% and 80% of
the features of the larger module, but using only 100 kilobytes of code,
which is about 1/30th of the larger module.
The Concept of Tiny Date and Time
Due to the inherent complexity, Date and Time is intrinsically very
difficult to implement properly.
The arguably only module to implement it completely correct is DateTime.
However, to implement it properly DateTime is quite slow and requires
3-4 megabytes of memory to load.
The challenge in implementing a Tiny equivalent to DateTime is to do so
without making the functionality critically flawed, and to carefully
select the subset of functionality to implement.
If you look at where the main complexity and cost exists, you will find
that it is relatively cheap to represent a date or time as an object,
but much much more expensive to modify or convert the object.
As a result, Time::Tiny provides the functionality required to represent
a date as an object, to stringify the date and to parse it back in, but
does not allow you to modify the dates.
The purpose of this is to allow for date object representations in
situations like log parsing and fast real-time work.
The problem with this is that having no ability to modify date limits
the usefulness greatly.
To make up for this, if you have DateTime installed, any Time::Tiny
module can be inflated into the equivalent DateTime as needing, loading
DateTime on the fly if necesary.
For the purposes of date/time logic, all Time::Tiny objects exist in the
"C" locale, and the "floating" time zone (although obviously in a pure
date context, the time zone largely doesn't matter).
When converting up to full DateTime objects, these local and time zone
settings will be applied (although an ability is provided to override
this).
In addition, the implementation is strictly correct and is intended to
be very easily to sub-class for specific purposes of your own.
METHODS
In general, the intent is that the API be as close as possible to the
API for DateTime. Except, of course, that this module implements less of
it.
new
# Create a Time::Tiny object for midnight
my $midnight = Time::Tiny->new(
hour => 0,
minute => 0,
second => 0,
);
The "new" constructor creates a new Time::Tiny object.
It takes three named params. "hour" should be the hour of the day
(0-23), "minute" should be the minute of the hour (0-59), and "second"
should be the second of the minute (0-59).
These are the only params accepted.
Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
now
my $current_time = Time::Tiny->now;
The "now" method creates a new date object for the current time.
The time created will be based on localtime, despite the fact that the
time is created in the floating time zone.
This means that the time created by "now" is somewhat lossy, but since
the primary purpose of Time::Tiny is for small transient time objects,
and not for use in calculations and comparisons, this is considered
acceptable for now.
Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
hour
The "hour" accessor returns the hour component of the time as an integer
from zero to twenty-three (0-23) in line with 24-hour time.
minute
The "minute" accessor returns the minute component of the time as an
integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
second
The "second" accessor returns the second component of the time as an
integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
from_string
The "from_string" method creates a new Time::Tiny object from a string.
The string is expected to be an "hh:mm:ss" type ISO 8601 time string.
my $almost_midnight = Time::Tiny->from_string( '23:59:59' );
Returns a new Time::Tiny object, or throws an exception on error.
as_string
The "as_string" method converts the time object to an ISO 8601 time
string, with seperators (see example in "from_string").
Returns a string.
DateTime
The "DateTime" method is used to create a DateTime object that is
equivalent to the Time::Tiny object, for use in comversions and
caluculations.
As mentioned earlier, the object will be set to the 'C' locate, and the
'floating' time zone.
If installed, the DateTime module will be loaded automatically.
Returns a DateTime object, or throws an exception if DateTime is not
installed on the current host.
SUPPORT
Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Time-Tiny>
For other issues, or commercial enhancement or support, contact the
author.
AUTHOR
Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
SEE ALSO
DateTime, DateTime::Tiny, Time::Tiny, Config::Tiny, ali.as
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Adam Kennedy.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included
with this module.