What is the best way to handle expires_in data in the model table-CodePudding

I have licenses that are purchased and become user_licenses that users get when they purchase the license. The time a license is valid for, cost, name and description are all stored in the license table.

When the license is purchased the expiration is set on the user_license (Date.now License.expiration_years)

So basically the user license expiration date is:

UserLicense.expiration_date = Date.now   expires_in_days.days   expires_in_weeks.weeks   expires_in_months.months   expires_in_years.years

Is there another way to handle the expire_in_* columns? Maybe using a sort of jsonb structure?

# license table:

      t.string :name, null: false
      t.string :description
      t.integer :amount, default: 0, null: false
      t.jsonb :details, default: {}, null: false
      t.boolean :hidden
      t.string :currency
      t.integer :expires_in_days, default: 0, null: false
      t.integer :expires_in_weeks, default: 0, null: false
      t.integer :expires_in_months, default: 0, null: false
      t.integer :expires_in_years, default: 0, null: false

CodePudding user response：

As already stated in other comments, unless there is a valid reason not mentioned in the question to store specific days/weeks/months/years for future expiration in the database, you avoid a lot of trouble by just storing the expiration date.

Then from this date you could calculate whatever you want.

CodePudding user response：

Use the Postgres interval type. This type represents a duration of time such as:

INTERVAL '1 year 2 months 3 days'

Rails has supported the interval type natively since 6.1 and maps it to an ActiveSupport::Duration. You can use it in previous versions but you need to manually parse the string. If you want to advance a date from a duration you can use Time#advance:

# Three days, four hours and 30 minutes
Time.current.advance(
  ActiveSupport::Duration.parse("P3DT4H30M").parts
)

Not only that but you can also use intervals to do database queries with relative time without going insane.