Rails 6 adds before? and after? to Date and Time

Rails 6 adds before? and after? to Date , DateTime , Time and ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone classes.

before? and after? are aliases to < (less than) and > (greater than) methods respectively.

Let's checkout how it works.

Rails 5.2

Let's try calling before? on a date object in Rails 5.2.

1
2> > Date.new(2019, 3, 31).before?(Date.new(2019, 4, 1))
3
4=> NoMethodError: undefined method 'before?' for Sun, 31 Mar 2019:Date
5from (irb):1
6
7> > Date.new(2019, 3, 31) < Date.new(2019, 4, 1)
8
9=> true
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Rails 6.0.0.beta2

Now, let's compare Date , DateTime , Time and ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone objects using before? and after? in Rails 6.

1
2> > Date.new(2019, 3, 31).before?(Date.new(2019, 4, 1))
3
4=> true
5
6> > Date.new(2019, 3, 31).after?(Date.new(2019, 4, 1))
7
8=> false
9
10> > DateTime.parse('2019-03-31').before?(DateTime.parse('2019-04-01'))
11
12=> true
13
14> > DateTime.parse('2019-03-31').after?(DateTime.parse('2019-04-01'))
15
16=> false
17
18> > Time.parse('2019-03-31').before?(Time.parse('2019-04-01'))
19
20=> true
21
22> > Time.parse('2019-03-31').after?(Time.parse('2019-04-01'))
23
24=> false
25
26> > ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.new(Time.utc(2019, 3, 31, 12, 0, 0), ActiveSupport::TimeZone["Eastern Time (US & Canada)"]).before?(ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.new(Time.utc(2019, 4, 1, 12, 0, 0), ActiveSupport::TimeZone["Eastern Time (US & Canada)"]))
27
28=> true
29
30> > ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.new(Time.utc(2019, 3, 31, 12, 0, 0), ActiveSupport::TimeZone["Eastern Time (US & Canada)"]).after?(ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.new(Time.utc(2019, 4, 1, 12, 0, 0), ActiveSupport::TimeZone["Eastern Time (US & Canada)"]))
31
32=> false
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Here is the relevant pull request for adding before? and after? methods and the pull request for moving before? and after? to DateAndTime::Calculations.