NAME

       DateTime::Tiny - A date object, with as little code as possible

SYNOPSIS

         # Create a date manually
         $christmas = DateTime::Tiny->new(
             year   => 2006,
             month  => 12,
             day    => 25,
             hour   => 10,
             minute => 45,
             second => 0,
             );

         # Show the current date
         my $now = DateTime::Tiny->now;
         print "Year   : " . $now->year   . "\n";
         print "Month  : " . $now->month  . "\n";
         print "Day    : " . $now->day    . "\n";
         print "Hour   : " . $now->hour   . "\n";
         print "Minute : " . $now->minute . "\n";
         print "Second : " . $now->second . "\n";

DESCRIPTION

       DateTime::Tiny is a most prominent member of the DateTime::Tiny suite of time modules.

       It implements an extremely lightweight object that represents a datetime.

   The Tiny Mandate
       Many CPAN modules which provide the best implementation of a certain concepts are very
       large. For some reason, this generally seems to be about 3 megabyte of ram usage to load
       the module.

       For a lot of the situations in which these large and comprehensive implementations exist,
       some people will only need a small fraction of the functionality, or only need this
       functionality in an ancillary role.

       The aim of the Tiny modules is to implement an alternative to the large module that
       implements a useful subset of their functionality, using as little code as possible.

       Typically, this means a module that implements between 50% and 80% of the features of the
       larger module (although this is just a guideline), but using only 100 kilobytes of code,
       which is about 1/30th of the larger module.

   The Concept of Tiny Date and Time
       Due to the inherent complexity, Date and Time is intrinsically very difficult to implement
       properly.

       The arguably only module to implement it completely correct is DateTime. However, to
       implement it properly DateTime is quite slow and requires 3-4 megabytes of memory to load.

       The challenge in implementing a Tiny equivalent to DateTime is to do so without making the
       functionality critically flawed, and to carefully select the subset of functionality to
       implement.

       If you look at where the main complexity and cost exists, you will find that it is
       relatively cheap to represent a date or time as an object, but much much more expensive to
       modify, manipulate or convert the object.

       As a result, DateTime::Tiny provides the functionality required to represent a date as an
       object, to stringify the date and to parse it back in, but does not allow you to modify
       the dates.

       The purpose of this is to allow for date object representations in situations like log
       parsing and fast real-time type work.

       The problem with this is that having no ability to modify date limits the usefulness
       greatly.

       To make up for this, if you have DateTime installed, any DateTime::Tiny module can be
       inflated into the equivalent DateTime as needing, loading DateTime on the fly if
       necessary.

       This is somewhat similar to DateTime::LazyInit, but unlike that module DateTime::Tiny is
       not modifiable.

       For the purposes of date/time logic, all DateTime::Tiny objects exist in the "C" locale,
       and the "floating" time zone. This may be improved in the future if a suitably tiny way of
       handling timezones is found.

       When converting up to full DateTime objects, these local and time zone settings will be
       applied (although an ability is provided to override this).

       In addition, the implementation is strictly correct and is intended to be very easily to
       sub-class for specific purposes of your own.

METHODS

       In general, the intent is that the API be as close as possible to the API for DateTime.
       Except, of course, that this module implements less of it.

   new
         my $date = DateTime::Tiny->new(
             year   => 2006,
             month  => 12,
             day    => 31,
             hour   => 10,
             minute => 45,
             second => 32,
             );

       The "new" constructor creates a new DateTime::Tiny object.

       It takes six named params. "day" should be the day of the month (1-31), "month" should be
       the month of the year (1-12), "year" as a 4 digit year.  "hour" should be the hour of the
       day (0-23), "minute" should be the minute of the hour (0-59) and "second" should be the
       second of the minute (0-59).

       These are the only params accepted.

       Returns a new DateTime::Tiny object.

   now
         my $current_date = DateTime::Tiny->now;

       The "now" method creates a new date object for the current date.

       The date created will be based on localtime, despite the fact that the date is created in
       the floating time zone.

       Returns a new DateTime::Tiny object.

   year
       The "year" accessor returns the 4-digit year for the date.

   month
       The "month" accessor returns the 1-12 month of the year for the date.

   day
       The "day" accessor returns the 1-31 day of the month for the date.

   hour
       The "hour" accessor returns the hour component of the time as an integer from zero to
       twenty-three (0-23) in line with 24-hour time.

   minute
       The "minute" accessor returns the minute component of the time as an integer from zero to
       fifty-nine (0-59).

   second
       The "second" accessor returns the second component of the time as an integer from zero to
       fifty-nine (0-59).

   ymdhms
       The "ymdhms" method returns the most common and accurate stringified date format, which
       returns in the form "2006-04-12".

   from_string
       The "from_string" method creates a new DateTime::Tiny object from a string.

       The string is expected to be an ISO 8601 time, with seperators.

         my $almost_midnight = DateTime::Tiny->from_string( '2006-12-20T23:59:59' );

       Returns a new DateTime::Tiny object, or throws an exception on error.

   as_string
       The "as_string" method converts the date to the default string, which at present is the
       same as that returned by the "ymd" method above.

       This string matches the ISO 8601 standard for the encoding of a date as a string.

   DateTime
       The "DateTime" method is used to create a DateTime object that is equivalent to the
       DateTime::Tiny object, for use in comversions and caluculations.

       As mentioned earlier, the object will be set to the 'C' locate, and the 'floating' time
       zone.

       If installed, the DateTime module will be loaded automatically.

       Returns a DateTime object, or throws an exception if DateTime is not installed on the
       current host.

SUPPORT

       Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at

       http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=DateTime-Tiny
       <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=DateTime-Tiny>

       For other issues, or commercial enhancement or support, contact the author.

AUTHOR

       Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>

SEE ALSO

       DateTime, Date::Tiny, Time::Tiny, Config::Tiny, ali.as

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2006 - 2009 Adam Kennedy.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

       The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.