Doing conversions for you so you don’t have to google them and making code more readable.
Having code that looks like this is meaningless
meters = 8 * 1609.344
You could add comments
meters = 8 * 1609.344 # converting miles to meters
But why not have this!
8.miles.to.meters
You can even perform mathematical operations
10.kilometers + 1.mile # 11.609344 kilometers
Handling bytes now works according to the JEDEC memory standard
1.kb.to.b.to_f == 1024.0
Converting distance of arc length on Earth to an (approximate) corresponding spherical geometry angle can be done with
require 'alchemist/geospatial'
1.mile.geospatial.to.degree == 0.014457066992474555
To switch to the IEC memory standard, force SI units with
Alchemist.config.use_si = true
To see all the units alchemist has built in conversion for, check out the units file
You may also register your own units
Alchemist.register(:distance, [:beard_second, :beard_seconds], 5.angstroms)
gem install alchemist
In order for methods like 1.meter
to work, you'll either need to setup Alchemist yourself:
Alchemist.setup # This will load every category of measurement
if you only want to use one category for conversions you can load it individually:
Alchemist.setup('distance') # This will load only distance
It is suggested that you add your Alchemist.setup
call to config/initializers/alchemist.rb
and then restart your rails server.
Rails adds some methods like bytes
to Numeric
so it's highly recommended that instead of trying to call bytes
on a numeric, you should use the measure
method:
Alchemist.measure(10, :bytes)
Alchemist is licensed under the MIT license as specified in the gemspec