FuzzyDate is a Ruby Class for working with incomplete dates.

install gem

gem install fuzzy_date 

 There is also an extension to the ActiveRecord::Base class to provide an 'acts_as_fuzzy_date' class method

 Historical dates are often incomplete or approximate and this class allows
  such dates to be worked with and stored on a database.
 

FuzzyDate.new( year,month,day,wday,circa)

     year:   optional..is the year number 0 .. big as you like, -ve for BCE
     month:  optional.. is month number 1..12, or nil
     day:    optional.. is day number 1-31 or nil
     wday:   optional.. day of the week - 0=Sunday .. 6=Saturday
     circa:  true = daye is approx, or nil/false
     
     note that if you supply the weekday and a year/month/day the system will
     use your weekday as supplied even if this does not actually correspond
     in reality to the date supplied.
     

FuzzyDate.parse("date_string")

     date_string = eg: "tuesday"
                       "12 nov 1012"
                       "circa 412 bc"
                       
   Use in a database table by storing in an integer field of a format large
   enough to hold the digits of your maximum year + 8. Eg. a BIGNUM field
   stores 19 useful characters allowing the year to go to 99,999,999,999.
   ie 99 billion years.
   
   Use with an ActiveRecord class ..
   

       require 'fuzzy_date'

       class HistoricalPerson < ActiveRecord::Base

           acts_as_fuzzy_date : birth_date, death_date

       end