#3806 distance_of_time_in_words displays Rational instead of integer - Ruby on Rails

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#3806 open

distance_of_time_in_words displays Rational instead of integer

Reported by Corey | January 28th, 2010 @ 05:26 PM

When using the mathn ruby standard library, either directly or indirectly, the display of distance_of_time_in_words for time distances of one year or greater shows a Rational number instead of an integer.

For example:

$ script/console 
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.5)
>> from_time = Time.now
=> Thu Jan 28 09:11:53 -0800 2010
>> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
=> "about 1 year"
>> require 'mathn'
=> ["Prime"]
>> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
=> "about 368/365 years"
>>

I think that if line 92 in rails/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/date_helper.rb uses the round method on the result of the division for the distance_in_years value the display will be as expected.

Comments and changes to this ticket

Rohit Arondekar October 7th, 2010 @ 11:37 AM
- State changed from “new” to “stale”
- Importance changed from “” to “Low”
Marking ticket as stale. If this is still an issue please leave a comment with suggested changes, creating a patch with tests, rebasing an existing patch or just confirming the issue on a latest release or master/branches.

Corey October 8th, 2010 @ 02:59 AM

From the latest 2.3.x release:

    $ script/console 
    Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.9)
    >> from_time = Time.now
    => Thu Oct 07 18:20:30 -0700 2010
    >> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
    => "about 1 year"
    >> require 'mathn'
    => ["Prime"]
    >> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
    => "about 368/365 years"
    >>

From the latest Rails release:

    $ rails console
    Loading development environment (Rails 3.0.0)
    >> from_time = Time.now
    => Thu Oct 07 18:28:08 -0700 2010
    >> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
    => "about 1 year"
    >> require 'mathn'
    => ["Prime"]
    >> helper.distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, from_time + 1.year + 3.days)
    => "about 368/365 years"
    >>

I wanted to add a test case that would illustrate the problem. However, as it turned out requiring 'mathn' in the date_helper_test.rb also had it loaded for all of the tests that run after it and some of those then also failed. I don't know how to sandbox the loading of 'mathn' in the test suite so that other tests aren't affected.

However, for Fixnums the methods / and div give the same result, and that changing from / to div ensures that mathn's Rationals are not returned. I've created a patch from 2-3-stable which does that for distance_of_time_in_words and attached it.

distance_of_time_with_words_using_div.diff 1.3 KB

Rohit Arondekar October 8th, 2010 @ 03:07 AM
- State changed from “stale” to “open”
Wait, so mathn is redefining '/'? I think then it's the gems fault and not Rails. I mean Rails shouldn't change because of this. Still, opening ticket to get a consensus on this issue. Thanks for the reply!
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Corey October 8th, 2010 @ 03:34 AM
Unfortunately, in my application I'm not loading 'mathn' directly, some gem I just happen to use is loading it. Everything was ok for me with until this change to the DateHelper.

Just for reference, here's the Ruby issue related to mathn's behavior.
Ryan Bigg October 9th, 2010 @ 09:57 PM
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