Feature #20298
Updated by ioquatix (Samuel Williams) 2 months ago
Many Ruby primitive types have constructors, e.g. `Integer(...)`, `String(...)`, `Float(...)`, etc. These usually convert from some subset of types, e.g. `Float(1) -> 1.0` will convert an Integer to a Float, and `Float("1") -> 1.0` will parse a String to a Float, and similar for other type casts/constructors.
I'd like to propose we introduce something similar for `Time` (and possibly this extends to `Date`/`DateTime` in a follow up proposal).
Suggested implementation could look something like this:
```ruby
def Time(value)
case value
when Time
value
when Integer
Time.at(value)
when String # The format is assumed to be the result of `Time#to_s`.
Time.new(value) Time.parse(value)
else
value.to_time
end
end
```
Alternatively, we might like to be a little more specific with the `else` clause/error handling.
## Background
In a project, I need to support multiple serialization formats/coders, including MessagePack, Marshal and JSON.
While Marshal and MessagePack are capable of serializing `Time` instances, `JSON` is not.
The code looks a bit like this:
```
data = fetch_job_data
job = @coder.load(data)
scheduled_at = Time(job[:scheduled_at]) # Hypothetical type-cast as outlined above
```
## Additional Observations
While some primitive data types accept themselves as arguments and construct by copy, e.g. `Array.new(Array.new)`, others do not, e.g. `Hash` and `Time`. Perhaps `Time.new(Time.new)` should behave similarly to `Array.new(Array.new)` - the outer instance is a copy of the inner.