text for my blog entry showing how to use business_time

business_time_examples.rb

# require the libraries to make it all work
require 'rubygems'
require 'active_support'
require 'business_time'

# What time is it now?  Of course, this will be different
# for you, so your relative answrs below will vary
# accordingly:
Time.now

# If you were to call:
4.business_hours.from_now

# on a Monday morning, it'll return a time on Monday
# afternoon.
# Monday afternoon, it would return sometime on Tuesday
# morning.
# On Friday afternoon, it would return Monday morning,
# unless that Monday were a holiday, in which case it
# would return Tuesday morning.

# It works calculating backwards too, by asking for
# values like:
6.business_hours.ago

# It also calculates based on days:
5.business_days.from_now

# and you can base the calculations on any date/time,
# using the same helper names that ActiveSupport gives
# you:
my_birthday = Date.parse("August 4th, 2010")
13.business_days.since(my_birthday)
7.business_days.until(my_birthday)

# I have always found the ActiveSupport helper names
# slightly awkward, so I have also provided some of my
# own:
6.business_days.after(my_birthday)
10.business_days.before(my_birthday)

# By default, the range of business hours is from
# 9:00am, to 5:00pm, but you can change this easily:
BusinessTime::Config.beginning_of_workday = "8:30am"
BusinessTime::Config.end_of_workday = "5:30pm"

# and you can add holidays easily:
BusinessTime::Config.holidays << my_birthday
6.business_hours.after(Time.parse("August 3rd, 3:00pm"))

I recently had to change

require 'active_support'

to

require 'active_support/core_ext'

in order for this gist to work properly.