use Perl

First in the list is DateTime, which is looking to become a very nice module, although currently there isn't a working version available for Win32, so isn't very portable. Next up is Date::ICal, which is very similar and I've been using it more and more over the last year. Then lastly there's the old diehard of Time::Local, though that means we only have a limited date range. I did think about checking for Date::Manip, but seeing as the others are faster I didn't bother. Most of the need for these modules is centred around the need to represent dates in a standard format internally, which then get munged into appropriate formats.

Having discussed with Dave about some aspects of calendars, I thought it might be useful to have a Calendar::Functions module that contains a number of small bitesize routines that save you the time of writing them, should you need them. Seeing as Calendar::List had quite a few, I've already started to write it as a companion to Calendar::List.

Some of these sorts of routines are available in DateTime, Date::ICal, etc, but seeing as they might not be installed and the rest of the module copes without them, do you roll you own, or write a extra layer? I've gone with the latter (primarily because I need to write the Time::Local versions), but it does niggle me for two reasons. 1) It's extra code and 2) there are already far too many date/time routines already. My excuse is that it doesn't try to rewrite the other modules, but acts as an interface between the higher level functionality and the really cool date/time modules. So I suppose it's not so bad.

I'm hoping to get a first release prepared for the end of the week, so with a bit of luck it might hit CPAN before the end of the month.

I also had the thought that Params::Check/Params::Validate could do with a nice wrapper module for CGI params, as I will potentially have to do this anyway to pass my stuff through to whichever module I decide to use. Once I've got Calendar::List out the door, I'll be looking further into these.