/ 
Date-Holidays-Abstract-0.02
River stage one • 6 direct dependents • 8 total dependents
/ Date::Holidays::Abstract

NAME

Date::Holidays::Abstract - an abstract class for Date::Holidays::* modules

SYNOPSIS

package Date::Holidays::NN; use base qw(Date::Holidays::Abstract);

sub holidays { ... }

sub is_holiday { ... }

ABSTRACT

This module is an abstract class intended for Date::Holidays::*

The goal is to have all the existing and future modules implement the same methods, so they will have a uniform usage and can be used in polymorphic context or can be easily adapted into the Date::Holidays class.

DESCRIPTION

If you want to use Date::Holidays::Abstract and want to comply with my suggestions to the methods that ought to be implemented, you should implement:

is_holiday
holidays

is_holiday

Should at least take 3 arguments:

year, four digits
month, between 1-12
day, between 1-31

The return value from is holiday is either a 1 or 0 indicating true of false, indicating whether the specified date is a holiday in the given country's national calendar.

Additional arguments are at the courtesy of the author of the using module/class.

holidays

Should at least take one argument:

year, four digits

Returns a reference to a hash, where the keys are date represented as four digits. The two first representing month (01-12) and the last two representing day (01-31).

The value for the key in question is the local name for the holiday indicated by the day. The resultset will of course vary depending on the given country's national holiday.

Additional arguments are at the courtesy of the author of the using module/class.

--

Date::Holidays uses the requirements defined by this module and this module can therefor be used with success in conjunction with this.

This is an alternative to a SUPER class. I have given a lot of thought to programming a SUPER class, but since creating a super class for a bunch of modules implementing handling of national holidays, an abstract class seemed a better choice.

A proposed SUPER class for Date::Holidays::*: Date::Holidays::Super should implement is_holiday and holidays and expect these to be overloaded.

Overloading would be necessary since nothing intelligent can be said about holidays without specifying a nationality (a part from holidays being nice but too few), and the implemented methods would be empty bodies returning empty result sets.

So I am more for an abstract class and as stated I consider this class an experiment and I have implemented Date::Holidays::Super as an alternative.

Suggestions for changes and extensions are more than welcome.

SEE ALSO

Date::Holidays
Date::Holidays::Super
Date::Holidays::DE
Date::Holidays::DK
Date::Holidays::FR
Date::Holidays::UK
Date::Holiday::PT
Date::Japanese::Holiday
Class:Virtual

BUGS

Please report issues via CPAN RT:

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Date-Holidays-Abstract

or by sending mail to

bug-Date-Holidays-Abstract@rt.cpan.org

AUTHOR

Jonas B. Nielsen, (jonasbn) - <jonasbn@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

Date-Holidays-Abstract is (C) by Jonas B. Nielsen, (jonasbn) 2004

Date-Holidays-Abstract is released under the Artistic License See: (http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html) for details.