We can use a postgres function to do this in a really nice way.
Assuming we have a table people
, with a date of birth in the column dob
, which is a date, we can create a function that will allow us to index this column ignoring the year. (Thanks to Zoltán Böszörményi):
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION indexable_month_day(date) RETURNS TEXT as $BODY$
SELECT to_char($1, 'MM-DD');
$BODY$ language 'sql' IMMUTABLE STRICT;
CREATE INDEX person_birthday_idx ON people (indexable_month_day(dob));
Now, we need to query against the table, and the index. For instance, to get everyone who has a birthday in April of any year:
SELECT * FROM people
WHERE
indexable_month_day(dob) >= '04-01'
AND
indexable_month_day(dob) < '05-01';
There is one gotcha: if our start/finish period crosses over a year boundary, we need to change the query:
SELECT * FROM people
WHERE
indexable_month_day(dob) >= '12-29'
OR
indexable_month_day(dob) < '01-04';
To make sure we match leap-day birthdays, we need to know if we will 'move' them a day forward or backwards. In my case, it was simpler to just match on both days, so my general query looks like:
SELECT * FROM people
WHERE
indexable_month_day(dob) > '%(start)%'
%(AND|OR)%
indexable_month_day(dob) < '%(finish)%';
I have a django queryset method that makes this all much simpler:
def birthday_between(self, start, finish):
"""Return the members of this queryset whose birthdays
lie on or between start and finish."""
start = start - datetime.timedelta(1)
finish = finish + datetime.timedelta(1)
return self.extra(where=["indexable_month_day(dob) < '%(finish)s' %(andor)s indexable_month_day(dob) > %(start)s" % {
'start': start.strftime('%m-%d'),
'finish': finish.strftime('%m-%d'),
'andor': 'and if start.year == finish.year else 'or'
}]
def birthday_on(self, date):
return self.birthday_between(date, date)
Now, I can do things like:
Person.objects.birthday_on(datetime.date.today())
Matching leap-day birthdays only on the day before, or only the day after is also possible: you just need to change the SQL test to a `>=' or '<=', and not adjust the start/finish in the python function.