Add future and past providers to datetime

[sobolevn]

I would love to see the same feature from Datetime ported to both FutureDatetime and PastDatetime providers.

I hope that you will get the idea from the class names 🙂

[sobolevn]

Related: https://faker.readthedocs.io/en/master/providers/faker.providers.date_time.html

[lk-geimfari]

@ceccoemi Any chance you can work on it? I'm about to publish a new version and this feature will be a great addition in the changelog.

[sinecode]

@lk-geimfari yes, I should be able to work on it. Give me 2/3 days

[lk-geimfari]

@ceccoemi Great! Thank you very much! Feel free to ask your questions about the feature to @sobolevn.

[sinecode]

@sobolevn @lk-geimfari a couple of questions.

What do you think about adding the FutureDatetime and PastDatetime providers as subclass of the Datetime provider? In that case, is it ok if I include them in the same module date.py?

My idea is to override the methods that accepts the argument start and to set it to a moment in the future/past.

[sobolevn]

Sounds like a plan!

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[sobolevn]

This was never implemented. I needed this today once again.

[lk-geimfari]

Wait, don't we have the ability to generate such dates?

[lk-geimfari]

Almost every Datetime method accepts ranges of years as I can see.

[sobolevn]

not in an easy way, judging from the docs here: https://mimesis.name/master/api.html#datetime

Faker has future_datetime() and past_datetime that have the semantics that I want.
But, mimesis has no such feature. I have to manually add years in the past to get such days. Moreover, year sometimes is not enough. I want the datetime in the past this year. Or this month. Or this week, etc.

There are lots of business rules based on time. These things are 100% required. See how many of them exist here: https://faker.readthedocs.io/en/stable/providers/faker.providers.date_time.html

[lk-geimfari]

not in an easy way, judging from the docs here: https://mimesis.name/master/api.html#datetime

Faker has future_datetime() and past_datetime that have the semantics that I want. But, mimesis has no such feature. I have to manually add years in the past to get such days. Moreover, year sometimes is not enough. I want the datetime in the past this year. Or this month. Or this week, etc.

There are lots of business rules based on time. These things are 100% required. See how many of them exist here: https://faker.readthedocs.io/en/stable/providers/faker.providers.date_time.html

Can't we just add an extra argument and implement something like this:

dt = Datetime(moment='PAST')
dt = Datetime(moment='FUTURE')

[sobolevn]

Yes, this looks good to me. I would suggest to add more, like: PAST_YEAR, PAST_MONTH, PAST_WEEK, PAST_DAY. And the same for FUTURE

[lk-geimfari]

@sobolevn Hey! I'm planning on providing something similar:

class Timeframe:
    PAST_YEAR = 'PAST_YEAR'
    PAST_MONTH = 'PAST_MONTH'
    PAST_WEEK = 'PAST_WEEK'
    PAST_DAY = 'PAST_DAY'
    FUTURE_YEAR = 'FUTURE_YEAR'
    FUTURE_MONTH = 'FUTURE_MONTH'
    FUTURE_WEEK = 'FUTURE_WEEK'
    FUTURE_DAY = 'FUTURE_DAY'
    ANY = 'ANY'
    

# Note: There are only 9 method of "Datetime" to which this feature is applicable:
dt = Datetime(timeframe=Timeframe.PAST_YEAR)
dt.bulk_create_datetimes()
dt.week_date()
dt.year()
dt.date()
dt.formatted_date()
dt.time()
dt.datetime()
dt.formatted_datetime()
dt.timestamp()

Depending on the Timeframe passed in, it will always generate dates for the given time. The default will be Timeframe.ANY.

I can implement this on the weekend if it suits your needs.

However, this can break backward compatibility.

[sobolevn]

I also propose to add: FUTURE_THIS_DAY and PAST_THIS_DAY.
Other than that - looks good to me!

[lk-geimfari]

Turns out it's not as easy as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, I still plan to implement this feature, but couldn't give an accurate estimate as I'm very busy with work.