1Time::Tiny(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Time::Tiny(3)
2
3
4
6 Time::Tiny - A time object, with as little code as possible
7
9 version 1.08
10
12 # Create a time manually
13 $christmas = Time::Tiny->new(
14 hour => 10,
15 minute => 45,
16 second => 0,
17 );
18
19 # Show the current time
20 $now = Time::Tiny->now;
21 print "Hour : " . $now->hour . "\n";
22 print "Minute : " . $now->minute . "\n";
23 print "Second : " . $now->second . "\n";
24
26 Time::Tiny is a member of the DateTime::Tiny suite of time modules.
27
28 It implements an extremely lightweight object that represents a time,
29 without any time data.
30
31 The Tiny Mandate
32 Many CPAN modules which provide the best implementation of a concept
33 can be very large. For some reason, this generally seems to be about 3
34 megabyte of ram usage to load the module.
35
36 For a lot of the situations in which these large and comprehensive
37 implementations exist, some people will only need a small fraction of
38 the functionality, or only need this functionality in an ancillary
39 role.
40
41 The aim of the Tiny modules is to implement an alternative to the large
42 module that implements a subset of the functionality, using as little
43 code as possible.
44
45 Typically, this means a module that implements between 50% and 80% of
46 the features of the larger module, but using only 100 kilobytes of
47 code, which is about 1/30th of the larger module.
48
49 The Concept of Tiny Date and Time
50 Due to the inherent complexity, Date and Time is intrinsically very
51 difficult to implement properly.
52
53 The arguably only module to implement it completely correct is
54 DateTime. However, to implement it properly DateTime is quite slow and
55 requires 3-4 megabytes of memory to load.
56
57 The challenge in implementing a Tiny equivalent to DateTime is to do so
58 without making the functionality critically flawed, and to carefully
59 select the subset of functionality to implement.
60
61 If you look at where the main complexity and cost exists, you will find
62 that it is relatively cheap to represent a date or time as an object,
63 but much much more expensive to modify or convert the object.
64
65 As a result, Time::Tiny provides the functionality required to
66 represent a date as an object, to stringify the date and to parse it
67 back in, but does not allow you to modify the dates.
68
69 The purpose of this is to allow for date object representations in
70 situations like log parsing and fast real-time work.
71
72 The problem with this is that having no ability to modify date limits
73 the usefulness greatly.
74
75 To make up for this, if you have DateTime installed, any Time::Tiny
76 module can be inflated into the equivalent DateTime as needed, loading
77 DateTime on the fly if necessary.
78
79 For the purposes of date/time logic, all Time::Tiny objects exist in
80 the "C" locale, and the "floating" time zone (although obviously in a
81 pure date context, the time zone largely doesn't matter).
82
83 When converting up to full DateTime objects, these locale and time zone
84 settings will be applied (although an ability is provided to override
85 this).
86
87 In addition, the implementation is strictly correct and is intended to
88 be very easily to sub-class for specific purposes of your own.
89
91 In general, the intent is that the API be as close as possible to the
92 API for DateTime. Except, of course, that this module implements less
93 of it.
94
96 new
97 # Create a Time::Tiny object for midnight
98 my $midnight = Time::Tiny->new(
99 hour => 0,
100 minute => 0,
101 second => 0,
102 );
103
104 The "new" constructor creates a new Time::Tiny object.
105
106 It takes three named parameters. "hour" should be the hour of the day
107 (0-23), "minute" should be the minute of the hour (0-59), and "second"
108 should be the second of the minute (0-59).
109
110 These are the only parameters accepted.
111
112 Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
113
114 now
115 my $current_time = Time::Tiny->now;
116
117 The "now" method creates a new date object for the current time.
118
119 The time created will be based on localtime, despite the fact that the
120 time is created in the floating time zone.
121
122 This means that the time created by "now" is somewhat lossy, but since
123 the primary purpose of Time::Tiny is for small transient time objects,
124 and not for use in calculations and comparisons, this is considered
125 acceptable for now.
126
127 Returns a new Time::Tiny object.
128
129 hour
130 The "hour" accessor returns the hour component of the time as an
131 integer from zero to twenty-three (0-23) in line with 24-hour time.
132
133 minute
134 The "minute" accessor returns the minute component of the time as an
135 integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
136
137 second
138 The "second" accessor returns the second component of the time as an
139 integer from zero to fifty-nine (0-59).
140
141 from_string
142 The "from_string" method creates a new Time::Tiny object from a string.
143
144 The string is expected to be an "hh:mm:ss" type ISO 8601 time string.
145
146 my $almost_midnight = Time::Tiny->from_string( '23:59:59' );
147
148 Returns a new Time::Tiny object, or throws an exception on error.
149
150 as_string
151 The "as_string" method converts the time object to an ISO 8601 time
152 string, with separators (see example in "from_string").
153
154 Returns a string.
155
156 DateTime
157 The "DateTime" method is used to create a DateTime object that is
158 equivalent to the Time::Tiny object, for use in conversions and
159 calculations.
160
161 As mentioned earlier, the object will be set to the 'C' locate, and the
162 'floating' time zone.
163
164 If installed, the DateTime module will be loaded automatically.
165
166 Returns a DateTime object, or throws an exception if DateTime is not
167 installed on the current host.
168
170 This module was written by Adam Kennedy in 2006. In 2016, David Golden
171 adopted it as a caretaker maintainer.
172
174 DateTime, DateTime::Tiny, Time::Tiny, Config::Tiny, ali.as
175
177 Bugs / Feature Requests
178 Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at
179 <https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny/issues>. You will be notified
180 automatically of any progress on your issue.
181
182 Source Code
183 This is open source software. The code repository is available for
184 public review and contribution under the terms of the license.
185
186 <https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny>
187
188 git clone https://github.com/dagolden/Time-Tiny.git
189
191 • Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>
192
193 • David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>
194
196 Tim Heaney <oylenshpeegul@gmail.com>
197
199 This software is copyright (c) 2006 by Adam Kennedy.
200
201 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
202 the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
203
204
205
206perl v5.34.0 2021-07-23 Time::Tiny(3)