Date::Holidays::DE - Determine German holidays
use Date::Holidays::DE qw(holidays); my $feiertage_ref = holidays(); my @feiertage = @$feiertage_ref;
This module exports a single function named holidays() which returns a list of German holidays in a given year.
The module knows about the following holidays:
neuj Neujahr New Year's day hl3k Hl. 3 Koenige Epiphany romo Rosenmontag Carnival monday fadi Faschingsdienstag Shrove tuesday karf Karfreitag Good friday osts Ostersonntag Easter sunday ostm Ostermontag Easter monday pfis Pfingstsonntag Whit sunday pfim Pfingstmontag Whit monday himm Himmelfahrtstag Ascension day fron Fronleichnam Corpus christi 1mai Maifeiertag Labor day, German style mari Mariae Himmelfahrt Assumption day 3okt Tag der deutschen Einheit Reunion day refo Reformationstag Reformation day alhe Allerheiligen All hallows day buss Buss- und Bettag Penance day heil Heiligabend Christmas eve wei1 1. Weihnachtstag Christmas wei2 2. Weihnachtstag Christmas silv Silvester New year's eve
Please refer to the module source for detailed information about how every holiday is calculated. Too much detail would be far beyond the scope of this document, but it's not particularly hard once you've found the date for Easter.
The list returned by holidays() consists of UNIX-Style timestamps in seconds since The Epoch. You may pass a strftime() style format string to get the dates in any format you desire:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(FORMAT=>"%d.%m.%Y");
This might be considered "hard to use" by some people, so here are a few examples to get you started:
FORMAT=>"%d.%m.%Y" 25.12.2001 FORMAT=>"%Y%m%d" 20011225 FORMAT=>"%a, %B %d" Tuesday, December 25
Please consult the manual page of strftime() for a complete list of available format definitions.
There is, however, one "proprietary" extension to the formats of strftime(): The format definition %# will print the internal abbreviation used for each holiday.
FORMAT=>"%#:%d.%m" wei1:25.12.
As the module doesn't want to deal with i18n issues, you'll have to find your own way to translate the aliases into your local language. See the example/feiertage.pl script included in the distribution to get the idea. This was added in version 0.6.
The module also knows about different regulations throughout Germany.
When calling holidays(), the resulting list by default contains the list of Germany-wide holidays.
You can specify one ore more of the following federal states to get the list of holidays local to that state:
bw Baden-Wuerttemberg by Freistaat Bayern be Berlin bb Brandenburg hb Freie Hansestadt Bremen hh Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg he Hessen mv Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ni Niedersachsen nw Nordrhein-Westfalen rp Rheinland-Pfalz sl Saarland sn Freistaat Sachsen st Sachsen-Anhalt sh Schleswig-Holstein th Freistaat Thueringen
For example,
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['by', 'bw']);
returns the list of holidays local to Bayern or Baden-Wuerttemberg.
To get the list of local holidays along with the default list of common German holidays, use the following:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['common', 'bw']);
returns the list of common German holidays merged with the list of holidays specific to Baden-Wuerttemberg.
You can also request a list containing all holidays this module knows about:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['all']);
will return a list of all known holidays. This was added in version 0.6.
There are a number of holidays that aren't really holidays, e.g. New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve. These aren't contained in the common set of holidays returnd by the holidays() function. The aforementioned silv and heil are probably the most likely ones that you'll need. If you live in Koeln, you'll probably want to include romo and fadi, too. ;-)
As if things weren't bad enough already, there even are Holidays that aren't valid in an entire state. This refers to fron, alhe and mari in particular.
If you want one or several of them to appear in the output from holidays(), use the following:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(ADD=>['heil', 'silv']);
By default, holidays() returns the holidays for the current year. Specify a year as follows:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(YEAR=>2004);
By default, holidays() includes Holidays that occur on weekends in its listing.
To disable this behaviour, set the WEEKENDS option to 0:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WEEKENDS=>0);
Get all holidays for Germany and Bayern in 2004, count New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve as Holidays. Also, we live in a catholic region where Assumption day is a holiday, too. Exclude weekends and return the date list in human readable format:
my $feiertage_ref = holidays( WHERE => ['common', 'he'], FORMAT => "%a, %d.%m.%Y" WEEKENDS => 0, YEAR => 2004, ADD => ['heil', 'silv', 'mari']);
Uses Date::Calc 5.0 for all calculations. Makes use of the POSIX and Time::Local modules from the standard Perl distribution.
If you run into a miscalculation, need some sort of feature or an additional holiday, or if you know of any new changes to our funky holiday situation, please drop the author a note.
The official holiday dates are published by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior at:
http://www.bmi.bund.de/services/lexikon/lexikon.jsp?key=F&hit=Feiertage
Date::Calc works with year, month and day numbers exclusively. Even though this module uses Date::Calc for all calculations, it represents the calculated holidays as UNIX timestamps (seconds since The Epoch) to allow for more flexible formatting. This limits the range of years to work on to the years from 1972 to 2037.
Date::Holidays::DE doesn't know anything about past holiday regulations. Tag der Deutschen Einheit, for example, was moved in 1991 from June 17th to October 3rd after the reunion of the eastern and western parts of Germany. None of the calendar programs the author has looked at, know about June 17th.
Date::Holidays::DE is not configurable. Holiday changes don't come over night and a new module release can be rolled out within a single day.
Date::Holidays::DE probably won't work in Microsoft's "Windows" operating environment.
Martin Schmitt <mas at scsy dot de>
perl, Date::Calc.
To install Date::Holidays::DE, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Date::Holidays::DE
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Date::Holidays::DE
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.