Modifying date to enable search in mysql DateTime format - sql

Question

I have an UI, in which we which we select a date range, and then perform a query to check orders within that range.
So the valid formats accepted are
a) 2013-04-01 17:00:00 - 2013-04-16 18:00:00
b) 2013-04-01 17:00:00 - 2013-04-16
c) 2013-04-01 - 2013-04-16
I split it in ruby to give me start_date and end_date. I don't have to touch the start time, as it ready for the sql query.
But the end_date has to be modified because to perform a ranged query created_at BETWEEN '2013-04-01 17:00:00' AND '2013-04-16' does not give me the results of 16th which should be included in the result set. (As it compares to 2013-04-16 00:00:00)
So this is the working solution, I came up with
end_date = Time.parse(end_date).strftime("%T")=="00:00:00" ? (end_date.to_s) + " 23:59:59" : end_date.to_s
Is there a better way to do this as the above looks quite confusing? (Looking or 1-2 line answers, not more)

Answer 1

You could use the DateTime.parse(str) method:
date_str = "2013-04-16"
date = DateTime.parse(date_str)
#=> Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000
date_time_str = "2013-04-16 18:00:00"
date = DateTime.parse(date_time_str)
#=> Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:00:00 +0000
And then you could test the .hour (or .minute) and set the end_date to end_of_day if no time was selected:
end_date = (date.hour == 0 && date.minute == 0) ? date.end_of_day : date
Little improvement: You could test if the parsed date is equal to the beginning of this date (no hours/minutes/seconds):
date = DateTime.parse("2013-12-12")
#=> Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000
date.beginning_of_day
#=> Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000
end_date = (date.beginning_of_day == date) ? date.end_of_day : date
#=> Thu, 12 Dec 2013 23:59:59 +0000
To solve the problem when user enters a DateTime like 2013-04-16 00:00:00, you can use .include? to check if the string contains the '00:00:00' part:
date_str = "2013-04-16 00:00:00"
date = DateTime.parse(date_str)
end_date = date if date_str.include?('00:00:00') # means the user explicitly wants the time at 00:00 and 00 second
end_date ||= (date.beginning_of_day == date) ? date.end_of_day : date # set end_date if end_date.nil?