SYNOPSIS

use 5.10.0;
use Oxford::Calendar;
use Date::Calc;
say "Today is " . Oxford::Calendar::ToOx(reverse Date::Calc::Today);

DESCRIPTION

This module converts University of Oxford dates (Oxford academic dates) to and from Real World dates, and provides information on Terms of the University.

The Terms of the University are defined by the Regulations on the number and lengths of terms, available online from

<http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/03-00_REGULATIONS_ON_THE_NUMBER_AND_LENGTH_OF_TERMS.shtml>

This document describes the start and end dates of Oxford Terms.

In addition to this, the dates of Full Term, required to calculate the week number of the term, are prescribed by Council, and published periodically in the University Gazette.

Full term comprises weeks 1-8 inclusive, but sometimes, dates outside of full term are presented in the Oxford academic date format. This module will optionally provide such dates.

Data for these prescribed dates may be supplied in the file /etc/oxford-calendar.yaml; if this file does not exist, built-in data will be used. The built-in data is periodically updated from the semi-authoritative source at

<http://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/dates-of-term>.

or the authoritative source, the Gazette, available online from

<http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/>.

<http://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/The-University-Year> describes the academic year at Oxford.

DATE FORMAT

An Oxford academic date has the following format:

<day of week>, <week number>[st,nd,rd,th] week, <term name> <year>

where term name is one of

• Michaelmas (autumn)
• Hilary (spring)
• Trinity (summer)

Example:

Friday, 8th Week, Michaelmas 2007

FUNCTIONS

ToOx($day, $month, $year, [\%options])

Given a day, month and year in standard human format (that is, month is 1-12, not 0-11, and year is four digits) will return a string of the form

    Day, xth week, Term year

or an array

    (Day, week of term, Term, year)

depending on how it is called. The exact behaviour is modified by the 'mode' option described below.

If the requested date is not in full term or extended term (see below), undef will be returned.

If the requested date is not covered by the database, ToOx will die with an ``out of range'' error message. Therefore it is recommended to eval ToOx with appropriate error handling.

%options can contain additional named parameter options:

mode

Several modes are available:

full_term

Term dates will only be returned if the date requested is part of a full term (as defined by the web page above).

ext_term

Term dates will only be returned if the date requested is part of an extended term, or statutory term.

nearest

Will return term dates based on the nearest term, even if the date requested is not part of an extended term (i.e. will include fictional week numbers).

This is currently the default behaviour, for backwards compatibility with previous releases; this may be changed in future.

confirmed

If true, ignores dates marked as provisional in the database.

ThisTerm($year, $month, $day)

Given a year, month, term in standard human format (that is, month is 1-12, not 0-11, and year is four digits) will returns the current term or undef if in vacation or unknown. The term is given as an array in the form (year, term).

NextTerm($year, $month, $day)

Given a day, month and year in standard human format (that is, month is 1-12, not 0-11, and year is four digits) will return the next term (whether or not the date given is in term time). The term is given as an array in the form (year, term).

StatutoryTermDates($year)

Returns a hash reference keyed on terms for a given year, the value of each being a hash reference containing start and end dates for that term. The dates are stored as array references containing numeric year, month, day values.

Note: these are the statutory term dates, not full term dates.

Parse($string)

Takes a free-form description of an Oxford calendar date, and attempts to divine the expected meaning. If the name of a term is not found, the current term will be assumed. If the description is unparsable, undef is returned. Otherwise, an array will be returned of the form "($year,$term,$week,$day)".

This function is experimental.

FromOx($year, $term, $week, $day)

Converts an Oxford date into a Gregorian date, returning a string of the form "DD/MM/YYYY" or undef.

The arguments are of the same format as returned by ToOx in array context; that is, a four-digit year, the name of the term, the week number, and the name of the day of week (e.g. 'Sunday').

If the requested date is not covered by the database, FromOx will die with an ``out of range'' error message. Therefore it is recommended to eval ToOx with appropriate error handling.

AUTHOR

Simon Cozens is the original author of this module.

Eugene van der Pijll, "[email protected]" took over maintenance from Simon for a time.

Dominic Hargreaves currently maintains this module for IT Services, University of Oxford.