I ended up creating a custom operator for Date
:
extension Date {
static func - (lhs: Date, rhs: Date) -> TimeInterval {
return lhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate - rhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
}
}
With this operator I can now compute the difference between two dates on a more abstract level without caring about timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
or what exactly the reference date is – and without losing precision, for example:
let delta = toDate - fromDate
Obviously, I didn’t change much, but for me it’s a lot more readable and consequent: Swift has the +
operator already implemented for a Date
and a TimeInterval
:
/// Returns a `Date` with a specified amount of time added to it. public static func + (lhs: Date, rhs: TimeInterval) -> Date
So it’s already supporting
Date + TimeInterval = Date
Consequently, it should also support
Date - Date = TimeInterval
in my opinion and that’s what I added with the simple implementation of the -
operator. Now I can simply write the example function exactly as mentioned in my question:
func computeNewDate(from fromDate: Date, to toDate: Date) -> Date
let delta = toDate - fromDate // `Date` - `Date` = `TimeInterval`
let today = Date()
if delta < 0 {
return today
} else {
return today + delta // `Date` + `TimeInterval` = `Date`
}
}
It might very well be that this has some downsides that I’m not aware of at this moment and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.