Where the Streets Dates Have No Name Time

Where the Streets Have No Name, the U2 song, was released on 31 August 1987. At what time? It is not relevant. Just the date, ie the calendar day, matters. If I had to translate this in a JSON API, I would write the following: {"release_date": "1987-08-31"}, ie basic ISO 8601, no time or time zone.

When dealing with such dates with no time, some operations can be necessary. For instance, what is the 7th day after 31 August 1987? No dependency allowed. This blog post will answer this question. Easy peasy, right?

But beware, the experienced developer should be humble when coding such operations. Dealing with calendars is hard and I can easily prove it. Just answer this simple question: is every minute in a calendar 60 seconds long? If you answered “yes”, you failed the test. Go study and have fun.

Hopefully, Swift’s Foundation provides everything we need to avoid obvious traps. Let’s see what a struct to handle dates with no time could look like.

The implementation

This is the end result. A discussion follows.

import Foundation

/// A string that represents dates using their ISO 8601 representations.
///
/// `PlainDate` is a way to handle dates with no time — such as `2022-03-02` for March 2nd of 2022 — to
/// perform operations with convenience including adding days, dealing with ranges, etc.
///
/// ## Usage Overview
///
/// A plain date can be initiated from a string literal, and can be used to create ranges.
///
///     let plainDate: PlainDate = "2022-03-01"
///     let aWeekLater = plainDate.advanced(by: 7)
///     for day in march1st ..< aWeekLater {
///       print(day)
///     }
public struct PlainDate {
    // MARK: - Creating an instance

    /// Returns a date string initialized using their ISO 8601 representation.
    /// - Parameters:
    ///   - dateAsString: The ISO 8601 representation of the date. For instance, `2022-03-02`for March 2nd of 2022.
    ///   - calendar: The calendar — including the time zone — to use. The default is the current calendar.
    /// - Returns: A date string, or `nil` if a valid date could not be created from `dateAsString`.
    public init?(from dateAsString: String, calendar: Calendar = .current) {
        let formatter = Self.createFormatter(timeZone: calendar.timeZone)
        guard let date = formatter.date(from: dateAsString) else {
            return nil
        }

        self.init(date: date, calendar: calendar, formatter: formatter)
    }

    /// Returns a date string initialized using their ISO 8601 representation.
    /// - Parameters:
    ///   - date: The date to represent.
    ///   - calendar: The calendar — including the time zone — to use. The default is the current calendar.
    public init(date: Date, calendar: Calendar = .current) {
        self.init(date: date, calendar: calendar, formatter: Self.createFormatter(timeZone: calendar.timeZone))
    }

    private init(date: Date, calendar: Calendar = .current, formatter: ISO8601DateFormatter) {
        self.formatter = formatter
        self.date = date
        self.calendar = calendar
    }

    // MARK: - Properties

    private let formatter: ISO8601DateFormatter
    private let date: Date
    private let calendar: Calendar

    private static func createFormatter(timeZone: TimeZone) -> ISO8601DateFormatter {
        let formatter = ISO8601DateFormatter()
        formatter.formatOptions = [.withFullDate]
        formatter.timeZone = timeZone
        return formatter
    }
}

extension PlainDate: ExpressibleByStringLiteral {
    public init(stringLiteral value: String) {
        self.init(from: value)!
    }
}

extension PlainDate: Strideable {
    public func distance(to other: PlainDate) -> Int {
        let timeInterval = date.distance(to: other.date)
        return Int(round(timeInterval / 86400.0))
    }

    public func advanced(by value: Int) -> PlainDate {
        let newDate = calendar.date(byAdding: .day, value: value, to: date)!
        return PlainDate(date: newDate, calendar: calendar, formatter: formatter)
    }
}

Just how bad is DateString for a name?

Edit: the first name for this class was DateString. I know. Since, I found out about the Temporal proposal for JavaScript that introduces something very similar to what I am trying to achieve here as PlainDate. So I renamed this accordingly.

Why are time zones involved in this code?

It’s the result of logical decisions I made from the tools I had at hand:

  • Converting an ISO 8601 string? Use ISO8601DateFormatter!
  • What type does ISO8601DateFormatter convert the input String into? As a Date!
  • So I should use a Date — with time — to store a date with no time? Yes!
  • How can I output the date back into a String? Use ISO8601DateFormatter again!
  • But look at this test, it’s getting buggy around days on which clocks change to deal with daylight saving time? Use a time zone!
  • So I have to carry a Calendar and a TimeZone around? No need: a Calendar does include a TimeZone, just carry the Calendar around!

Implementing ExpressibleByStringLiteral is so easy and convenient!

Yes, it is. Expressing a PlainDate just as "1987-08-31" is indeed pretty awesome.

Wow, and what about implementing Strideable?

I know, right? On top of answering our original question (date.advanced(by: offset)), Strideable helps doing things like:

let startDate: PlainDate = "2022-03-01"
let aWeekLater = startDate.advanced(by: 7)
for date in  startDate ..< aWeekLater {
  // do something.
}

Wait a minute! Is this a hard-coded 86400 in the code? Isn’t that forbidden?

🕵️ Good eye. 86400 is the number of seconds in a typical day. But not all days are 86400 seconds long. But the point here is to compute the distance in days between two dates, and I think this implementation is OK. I’ll explain why:

  1. Calendar is ignoring leap seconds. I know because a former Apple Foundation employee told me so.
  2. See the round? This is enough to deal with daylight savings according to my tests and my understanding of how daylight savings work. Consider a collection that contains the number of seconds of an arbitrary number of consecutive days. (a) There’s more than a 99% chance that a randomly picked item is 86400. (b) Considering that the 2 possible outliers values will alternate: if you find a 23-hour long day (82800 seconds) in the collection, you will find a 25-hour long day (90000 seconds) before you find another occurrence of a 23-hour long day. So the average of a set will tend to 86400 as it gets bigger.
  3. Here is a more intellectually satisfying alternative for this computation. It might be more solid if you’re working on something really time-sensitive. But it is about 2 times slower. So as long as my fast implementation does not fail me, I’ll stick to it.
let start = calendar.ordinality(of: .day, in: .era, for: self.date)
let end = calendar.ordinality(of: .day, in: .era, for: other.date)

guard let start = start, let end = end else {
    fatalError("The distance between 2 dates could not be computed.")
}

return end - start

Conclusion

Mission accomplished. Feel free to use this PlainDate class as is. I’ve been using it for a hobby project — a soccer newsletter — and it works great. If you can read French and soccer is your thing, you can sign up for the newsletter.

Addendum — iOS & macOS Time Zones

Here is a table of all the known time zones’ identifiers and abbreviations as run on iOS 15.2 and macOS 12.2.1.

For some reason, UTC is an abbreviation to the UTC identifier, but UTC is missing in the list of known identifiers. 🤷‍♂️ I initalized a time zone using UTC: it succeeded and querying the identifier returned GMT. Double-🤷‍♂️.

Identifier Abbreviations
Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa EAT
Africa/Algiers
Africa/Asmara
Africa/Bamako
Africa/Bangui
Africa/Banjul
Africa/Bissau
Africa/Blantyre
Africa/Brazzaville
Africa/Bujumbura
Africa/Cairo
Africa/Casablanca
Africa/Ceuta
Africa/Conakry
Africa/Dakar
Africa/Dar_es_Salaam
Africa/Djibouti
Africa/Douala
Africa/El_Aaiun
Africa/Freetown
Africa/Gaborone
Africa/Harare CAT
Africa/Johannesburg
Africa/Juba
Africa/Kampala
Africa/Khartoum
Africa/Kigali
Africa/Kinshasa
Africa/Lagos WAT
Africa/Libreville
Africa/Lome
Africa/Luanda
Africa/Lubumbashi
Africa/Lusaka
Africa/Malabo
Africa/Maputo
Africa/Maseru
Africa/Mbabane
Africa/Mogadishu
Africa/Monrovia
Africa/Nairobi
Africa/Ndjamena
Africa/Niamey
Africa/Nouakchott
Africa/Ouagadougou
Africa/Porto-Novo
Africa/Sao_Tome
Africa/Tripoli
Africa/Tunis
Africa/Windhoek
America/Adak
America/Anchorage
America/Anguilla
America/Antigua
America/Araguaina
America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires ART
America/Argentina/Catamarca
America/Argentina/Cordoba
America/Argentina/Jujuy
America/Argentina/La_Rioja
America/Argentina/Mendoza
America/Argentina/Rio_Gallegos
America/Argentina/Salta
America/Argentina/San_Juan
America/Argentina/San_Luis
America/Argentina/Tucuman
America/Argentina/Ushuaia
America/Aruba
America/Asuncion
America/Atikokan
America/Bahia
America/Bahia_Banderas
America/Barbados
America/Belem
America/Belize
America/Blanc-Sablon
America/Boa_Vista
America/Bogota COT
America/Boise
America/Cambridge_Bay
America/Campo_Grande
America/Cancun
America/Caracas
America/Cayenne
America/Cayman
America/Chicago CDT, CST
America/Chihuahua
America/Costa_Rica
America/Creston
America/Cuiaba
America/Curacao
America/Danmarkshavn
America/Dawson
America/Dawson_Creek
America/Denver MDT
America/Detroit
America/Dominica
America/Edmonton
America/Eirunepe
America/El_Salvador
America/Fort_Nelson
America/Fortaleza
America/Glace_Bay
America/Godthab
America/Goose_Bay
America/Grand_Turk
America/Grenada
America/Guadeloupe
America/Guatemala
America/Guayaquil
America/Guyana
America/Halifax ADT, AST
America/Havana
America/Hermosillo
America/Indiana/Indianapolis
America/Indiana/Knox
America/Indiana/Marengo
America/Indiana/Petersburg
America/Indiana/Tell_City
America/Indiana/Vevay
America/Indiana/Vincennes
America/Indiana/Winamac
America/Inuvik
America/Iqaluit
America/Jamaica
America/Juneau AKDT, AKST
America/Kentucky/Louisville
America/Kentucky/Monticello
America/Kralendijk
America/La_Paz
America/Lima PET
America/Los_Angeles PDT, PST
America/Lower_Princes
America/Maceio
America/Managua
America/Manaus
America/Marigot
America/Martinique
America/Matamoros
America/Mazatlan
America/Menominee
America/Merida
America/Metlakatla
America/Mexico_City
America/Miquelon
America/Moncton
America/Monterrey
America/Montevideo
America/Montreal
America/Montserrat
America/Nassau
America/New_York EDT, EST
America/Nipigon
America/Nome
America/Noronha
America/North_Dakota/Beulah
America/North_Dakota/Center
America/North_Dakota/New_Salem
America/Nuuk
America/Ojinaga
America/Panama
America/Pangnirtung
America/Paramaribo
America/Phoenix MST
America/Port-au-Prince
America/Port_of_Spain
America/Porto_Velho
America/Puerto_Rico
America/Punta_Arenas
America/Rainy_River
America/Rankin_Inlet
America/Recife
America/Regina
America/Resolute
America/Rio_Branco
America/Santa_Isabel
America/Santarem
America/Santiago CLST, CLT
America/Santo_Domingo
America/Sao_Paulo BRST, BRT
America/Scoresbysund
America/Shiprock
America/Sitka
America/St_Barthelemy
America/St_Johns NDT, NST
America/St_Kitts
America/St_Lucia
America/St_Thomas
America/St_Vincent
America/Swift_Current
America/Tegucigalpa
America/Thule
America/Thunder_Bay
America/Tijuana
America/Toronto
America/Tortola
America/Vancouver
America/Whitehorse
America/Winnipeg
America/Yakutat
America/Yellowknife
Antarctica/Casey
Antarctica/Davis
Antarctica/DumontDUrville
Antarctica/Macquarie
Antarctica/Mawson
Antarctica/McMurdo
Antarctica/Palmer
Antarctica/Rothera
Antarctica/South_Pole
Antarctica/Syowa
Antarctica/Troll
Antarctica/Vostok
Arctic/Longyearbyen
Asia/Aden
Asia/Almaty
Asia/Amman
Asia/Anadyr
Asia/Aqtau
Asia/Aqtobe
Asia/Ashgabat
Asia/Atyrau
Asia/Baghdad
Asia/Bahrain
Asia/Baku
Asia/Bangkok ICT
Asia/Barnaul
Asia/Beirut
Asia/Bishkek
Asia/Brunei
Asia/Calcutta
Asia/Chita
Asia/Choibalsan
Asia/Chongqing
Asia/Colombo
Asia/Damascus
Asia/Dhaka BDT
Asia/Dili
Asia/Dubai GST
Asia/Dushanbe
Asia/Famagusta
Asia/Gaza
Asia/Harbin
Asia/Hebron
Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh
Asia/Hong_Kong HKT
Asia/Hovd
Asia/Irkutsk
Asia/Jakarta WIT
Asia/Jayapura
Asia/Jerusalem
Asia/Kabul
Asia/Kamchatka
Asia/Karachi PKT
Asia/Kashgar
Asia/Kathmandu
Asia/Katmandu
Asia/Khandyga
Asia/Krasnoyarsk
Asia/Kuala_Lumpur
Asia/Kuching
Asia/Kuwait
Asia/Macau
Asia/Magadan
Asia/Makassar
Asia/Manila PHT
Asia/Muscat
Asia/Nicosia
Asia/Novokuznetsk
Asia/Novosibirsk
Asia/Omsk
Asia/Oral
Asia/Phnom_Penh
Asia/Pontianak
Asia/Pyongyang
Asia/Qatar
Asia/Qostanay
Asia/Qyzylorda
Asia/Rangoon
Asia/Riyadh
Asia/Sakhalin
Asia/Samarkand
Asia/Seoul KST
Asia/Shanghai
Asia/Singapore SGT
Asia/Srednekolymsk
Asia/Taipei
Asia/Tashkent
Asia/Tbilisi
Asia/Tehran IRST
Asia/Thimphu
Asia/Tokyo JST
Asia/Tomsk
Asia/Ulaanbaatar
Asia/Urumqi
Asia/Ust-Nera
Asia/Vientiane
Asia/Vladivostok
Asia/Yakutsk
Asia/Yangon
Asia/Yekaterinburg
Asia/Yerevan
Atlantic/Azores
Atlantic/Bermuda
Atlantic/Canary
Atlantic/Cape_Verde
Atlantic/Faroe
Atlantic/Madeira
Atlantic/Reykjavik
Atlantic/South_Georgia
Atlantic/St_Helena
Atlantic/Stanley
Australia/Adelaide
Australia/Brisbane
Australia/Broken_Hill
Australia/Currie
Australia/Darwin
Australia/Eucla
Australia/Hobart
Australia/Lindeman
Australia/Lord_Howe
Australia/Melbourne
Australia/Perth
Australia/Sydney
Europe/Amsterdam
Europe/Andorra
Europe/Astrakhan
Europe/Athens EEST, EET
Europe/Belgrade
Europe/Berlin
Europe/Bratislava
Europe/Brussels
Europe/Bucharest
Europe/Budapest
Europe/Busingen
Europe/Chisinau
Europe/Copenhagen
Europe/Dublin
Europe/Gibraltar
Europe/Guernsey
Europe/Helsinki
Europe/Isle_of_Man
Europe/Istanbul TRT
Europe/Jersey
Europe/Kaliningrad
Europe/Kiev
Europe/Kirov
Europe/Lisbon WEST, WET
Europe/Ljubljana
Europe/London BST
Europe/Luxembourg
Europe/Madrid
Europe/Malta
Europe/Mariehamn
Europe/Minsk
Europe/Monaco
Europe/Moscow MSD, MSK
Europe/Oslo
Europe/Paris CEST, CET
Europe/Podgorica
Europe/Prague
Europe/Riga
Europe/Rome
Europe/Samara
Europe/San_Marino
Europe/Sarajevo
Europe/Saratov
Europe/Simferopol
Europe/Skopje
Europe/Sofia
Europe/Stockholm
Europe/Tallinn
Europe/Tirane
Europe/Ulyanovsk
Europe/Uzhgorod
Europe/Vaduz
Europe/Vatican
Europe/Vienna
Europe/Vilnius
Europe/Volgograd
Europe/Warsaw
Europe/Zagreb
Europe/Zaporozhye
Europe/Zurich
GMT GMT
Indian/Antananarivo
Indian/Chagos
Indian/Christmas
Indian/Cocos
Indian/Comoro
Indian/Kerguelen
Indian/Mahe
Indian/Maldives
Indian/Mauritius
Indian/Mayotte
Indian/Reunion
Pacific/Apia
Pacific/Auckland NZDT, NZST
Pacific/Bougainville
Pacific/Chatham
Pacific/Chuuk
Pacific/Easter
Pacific/Efate
Pacific/Enderbury
Pacific/Fakaofo
Pacific/Fiji
Pacific/Funafuti
Pacific/Galapagos
Pacific/Gambier
Pacific/Guadalcanal
Pacific/Guam
Pacific/Honolulu HST
Pacific/Johnston
Pacific/Kanton
Pacific/Kiritimati
Pacific/Kosrae
Pacific/Kwajalein
Pacific/Majuro
Pacific/Marquesas
Pacific/Midway
Pacific/Nauru
Pacific/Niue
Pacific/Norfolk
Pacific/Noumea
Pacific/Pago_Pago
Pacific/Palau
Pacific/Pitcairn
Pacific/Pohnpei
Pacific/Ponape
Pacific/Port_Moresby
Pacific/Rarotonga
Pacific/Saipan
Pacific/Tahiti
Pacific/Tarawa
Pacific/Tongatapu
Pacific/Truk
Pacific/Wake
Pacific/Wallis

The code to output this table:

import Foundation

for identifier in TimeZone.knownTimeZoneIdentifiers.sorted() {
    let abbreviations = TimeZone.abbreviationDictionary.filter { (k, v) in
        v == identifier
    }
    print("| \(identifier) | \(abbreviations.keys.sorted().joined(separator: ", ")) |")
}