DE(3pm)

NAME
Date::Holidays::DE - Determine German holidays

SYNOPSIS
  use Date::Holidays::DE qw(holidays);
  my $feiertage_ref = holidays();
  my @feiertage     = @$feiertage_ref;

DESCRIPTION
This module exports a single function named holidays() which returns a list of German holidays in a given year.

KNOWN HOLIDAYS
The module knows about the following holidays:

  neuj  Neujahr                     New Year's day
  hl3k  Hl. 3 Koenige               Epiphany
  weib  Weiberfastnacht             Fat Thursday
  romo  Rosenmontag                 Carnival monday
  fadi  Faschingsdienstag           Shrove tuesday
  asmi  Aschermittwoch              Ash wednesday
  frau  Internationaler Frauentag   International Women's day
  befr  Tag der Befreiung           Liberation day
  grdo  Gruendonnerstag             Maundy Thursday
  karf  Karfreitag                  Good friday
  kars  Karsamstag                  Holy Saturday
  osts  Ostersonntag                Easter sunday
  ostm  Ostermontag                 Easter monday
  pfis  Pfingstsonntag              Whit sunday
  pfim  Pfingstmontag               Whit monday
  himm  Himmelfahrtstag             Ascension day
  fron  Fronleichnam                Corpus christi
  1mai  Maifeiertag                 Labor day, German style
  17ju  Tag der deutschen Einheit   Reunion day (>= 1954, <= 1990)
  frie  Augsburger Friedensfest     Augsburg peace day
  mari  Mariae Himmelfahrt          Assumption day
  kind  Weltkindertag               International Childrens Day
  3okt  Tag der deutschen Einheit   Reunion day (>= 1990)
  refo  Reformationstag             Reformation day
  alhe  Allerheiligen               All hallows day
  buss  Buss- und Bettag            Penance day
  votr  Volkstrauertag              Remembrance Day, German Style
  toso  Totensonntag                Sunday in commemoration of the dead
  adv1  1. Advent                   1st sunday in advent
  adv2  2. Advent                   2nd sunday in advent
  adv3  3. Advent                   3rd sunday in advent
  adv4  4. Advent                   4th sunday in advent
  heil  Heiligabend                 Christmas eve
  wei1  1. Weihnachtstag            Christmas
  wei2  2. Weihnachtstag            Christmas
  silv  Silvester                   New year's eve

Please refer to the module source for detailed information about how every holiday is calculated. Too much detail would be far beyond the scope of this document, but it's not particularly hard once you've found the date for Easter.

USAGE

  OUTPUT FORMAT
The list returned by holidays() consists of UNIX-Style timestamps in seconds since The Epoch. You may pass a strftime() style format string to get the dates in any format you desire:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(FORMAT=>"%d.%m.%Y");

Here are a few examples to get you started:

  FORMAT=>"%d.%m.%Y"              25.12.2001
  FORMAT=>"%Y%m%d"                20011225
  FORMAT=>"%a, %B %d"             Tuesday, December 25

Please consult the manual page of strftime() for a complete list of available format definitions.

There is, however, one "proprietary" extension to the formats of strftime(): The format definition %# will print the internal abbreviation used for each holiday.

  FORMAT=>"%#:%d.%m"              wei1:25.12.

As the module doesn't want to deal with i18n issues, you'll have to find your own way to translate the aliases into your local language. See the example/feiertage.pl script included in the distribution to get the idea. This was added in version 0.6.

  LOCAL HOLIDAYS
The module also knows about different regulations throughout Germany.

When calling holidays(), the resulting list by default contains the list of Germany-wide holidays.

You can specify one ore more of the following federal states to get the list of holidays local to that state:

  bw  Baden-Wuerttemberg
  by  Freistaat Bayern
  be  Berlin
  bb  Brandenburg
  hb  Freie Hansestadt Bremen
  hh  Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg
  he  Hessen
  mv  Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
  ni  Niedersachsen
  nw  Nordrhein-Westfalen
  rp  Rheinland-Pfalz
  sl  Saarland
  sn  Freistaat Sachsen
  st  Sachsen-Anhalt
  sh  Schleswig-Holstein
  th  Freistaat Thueringen

For example,

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['by', 'bw']);

returns the list of holidays local to Bayern or Baden-Wuerttemberg.

To get the list of local holidays along with the default list of common German holidays, use the following:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['common', 'bw']);

returns the list of common German holidays merged with the list of holidays specific to Baden-Wuerttemberg.

You can also request a list containing all holidays this module knows about:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WHERE=>['all']);

will return a list of all known holidays. This was added in version 0.6.

  ADDITIONAL HOLIDAYS
There are a number of holidays that aren't really holidays, e.g. New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve. These aren't contained in the common set of holidays returned by the holidays() function. The aforementioned silv and heil are probably the most likely ones that you'll need. If you live in Koeln, you'll probably want to include romo and fadi, too. ;-)

As if things weren't bad enough already, there even are Holidays that aren't valid in an entire state. This refers to fron, alhe and mari in particular.

If you want one or several of them to appear in the output from holidays(), use the following:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(ADD=>['heil', 'silv']);

  SPECIFYING THE YEAR
By default, holidays() returns the holidays for the current year. Specify a year as follows:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(YEAR=>2004);

  HOLIDAYS ON WEEKENDS
By default, holidays() includes Holidays that occur on weekends in its listing.

To disable this behaviour, set the WEEKENDS option to 0:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays(WEEKENDS=>0);

COMPLETE EXAMPLE
Get all holidays for Germany and Bayern in 2004, count New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve as Holidays. Also, we live in a catholic region where Assumption day is a holiday, too. Exclude weekends and return the date list in human readable format:

  my $feiertage_ref = holidays( WHERE    => ['common', 'he'],
                                FORMAT   => "%a, %d.%m.%Y",
                                WEEKENDS => 0,
                                YEAR     => 2004,
                                ADD      => ['heil', 'silv', 'mari']);

PREREQUISITES
Uses Date::Calc 5.0 for all calculations. Makes use of the POSIX and Time::Local modules from the standard Perl distribution.

BUGS & SUGGESTIONS
If you run into a miscalculation, need some sort of feature or an additional holiday, or if you know of any new changes to our funky holiday situation, please drop the author a note.

Patches are welcome. If you can, please fork the project on github to submit your change:

  http://github.com/mschmitt/Date-Holidays-DE

Tag der Deutschen Einheit was moved from June 17th to October 3rd in 1990 and is therefore listed twice when calculating holidays for 1990. This is not a bug. Awareness for this was introduced in Version 1.1.

OFFICIAL HOLIDAY INFORMATION
The German Federal Ministry of the Interior used to publish a comprehensive list of holiday dates. This does currently not appear to be the case.

LIMITATIONS
Date::Calc works with year, month and day numbers exclusively. Even though this module uses Date::Calc for all calculations, it represents the calculated holidays as UNIX timestamps (seconds since The Epoch) to allow for more flexible formatting. On Perl versions earlier than 5.12.0 (released 2010), this limits the range of years to work on to the years from 1972 to 2037.

Historic regulations for Buss- und Bettag are still not implemented.

Date::Holidays::DE is not configurable. Holiday changes don't come over night and a new module release can be rolled out within a single day.

AUTHOR
Martin Schmitt <mas at scsy dot de>

SEE ALSO
perl, Date::Calc.