faker.date.future should include a min parameter

[tecsobs]

Clear and concise description of the problem

Right now there is no way to fake a date that is at least 5 years in the future for example.

The param years works as a range between 1 and the value specified.

Suggested solution

Create a new min param, optional, that allow to create a new date in the future with at least "min" years

Alternative

No response

Additional context

No response

[github-actions]

Thank you for your feature proposal.

We marked it as "waiting for user interest" for now to gather some feedback from our community:

• If you would like to see this feature be implemented, please react to the description with an up-vote (:+1:).
• If you have a suggestion or want to point out some special cases that need to be considered, please leave a comment, so we are aware about them.

We would also like to hear about other community members' use cases for the feature to give us a better understanding of their potential implicit or explicit requirements.

We will start the implementation based on:

• the number of votes (:+1:) and comments
• the relevance for the ecosystem
• availability of alternatives and workarounds
• and the complexity of the requested feature

We do this because:

• There are plenty of languages/countries out there and we would like to ensure that every method can cover all or almost all of them.
• Every feature we add to faker has "costs" associated to it:
  • initial costs: design, implementation, reviews, documentation
  • running costs: awareness of the feature itself, more complex module structure, increased bundle size, more work during refactors

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View more issues which are waiting for user interest

[Shinigami92]

You should pass the refDate as now + 5 years. How that refDate is calculated is up to you and you can use e.g. packages like luxon for that.
But it is not part of Faker to handle the complexity of Date-math.

[matthewmayer]

What about passing a refDate 5 years in the future?

[tecsobs]

What's the point of faker then?

Faker actually do some math for the future method, like:

this.between({ from: new Date(date.getTime() - 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365), to: new Date(date.getTime() + 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365), })

` const fromMs = toDate(from, this.faker.defaultRefDate).getTime();
const toMs = toDate(to, this.faker.defaultRefDate).getTime();
const dateOffset = this.faker.number.int(toMs - fromMs);

return new Date(fromMs + dateOffset);`

[Shinigami92]

What's the point of faker then?

The deterministic generation of data

[tecsobs]

as referenced before on my edit, faker have some calculations.

`const range = {
min: 1000,
max: years * 365 * 24 * 3600 * 1000,
};

let future = date.getTime();
future += this.faker.number.int(range); // some time from now to N years later, in milliseconds
date.setTime(future);`

The min value is set as constant, in milliseconds. My suggestion is offer a optional parameter for this, if not present use the constant

Add the min parameter only will not change the goal of faker, and it is not that a big deal either in my opinion

[ST-DDT]

@tecsobs Could you please describe/draft the API you would expect from/would like to have for the future method?

[matthewmayer]

Logically if this was added there would need to be equivalent paramters for recent(), past() , soon(), and future() as they are symmetrical.

[xpol]

The current date API is easy to get wrong.

E.g. faker.date.future with years options, we might think the result is a larger date than today.
But actually, it can be a result of today's time.

How about:

type DateOffsetOptions = {
    years?: number
    months?: number
    days?: number
    weeks?: number
    hours?: number
    ...
}

faker.date.after(options?: DateOffsetOptions): Date
faker.date.before(options?: DateOffsetOptions): Date

[ST-DDT]

@xpol How about a relativeBetween method?

relativeBetween({ refDate?: Date, startOffset: { years?, months?, days?, hours?, minutes?, seconds?, millis? }, endOffset: {...})

where the offset values can be both positive or negative e.g.

relativeBetween({startOffset: { days: 2 }, endOffset: { years: 1, days: -1}) // Returns a Date that is 2-364 days into the future
relativeBetween({startOffset: { days: -2 }, endOffset: { days: 2 }) // Returns a Date that is up to 2 days in the past or future

(or maybe just relative or as an alternative signature for between?)