ScheduleMerge

This is a simple package to produce conflict-free lists of time-bound objects from a list of potentially conflicting objects.

ScheduleMerge exposes two interfaces:

• Event - a time-bound object with a start and end time
• Schedule - a slice of Events

The Event has to implement the following functions:

• GetStartTime() time.Time - returns the start time of the event.
• GetEndTime() time.Time - returns the end time of the event.
• SetStartTime(time.Time) - sets the start time of the event (this is used when trimming an event).
• SetEndTime(time.Time) - sets the end time of the event (this is used when trimming an event).
• Clone() Event - returns a deep copy of the event (this is used when trimming an event).

The Schedule has to implement the following functions:

• GetEvents() []Event - returns a slice of the Events in the Schedule.
• SortByDesirability() - an in-place sort function for the Events in the Schedule (the concept of desirability is further explained below).

This package further provides an Engine (and it's constructor function NewEngine(rawSchedule Schedule, trimOverlaps bool) *Engine) which is used to do the actual sorting and merging of the Events. The Engine is used via the Merge() function. The Engine exposes the following fields:

• RawSchedule - the original Schedule passed to the Engine constructor.
• MergedSchedule - the Schedule produced by the Merge() function.
• TrimOverlaps - a boolean flag which determines whether the Engine should trim overlapping Events or not.

If the TrimOverlaps (or trimOverlaps for its constructor) flag is set to true, the Engine will trim conflicting Events to produce a conflict-free Schedule. If the flag is set to false, the Engine will discard conflicting Event with lower desirability to produce a conflict-free Schedule.

Event

The Event interface is used to represent a time-bound object with a start and end time as follows: [start, end).

Desirability

The concept of desirability is used to decide which Event to determine which Event to prioritise when a conflict occurs. The Event with the higher desirability is kept in the Schedule while the Event with the lower desirability is either trimmed or discarded (depending on the TrimOverlaps flag). The Event with the higher desirability is determined by the SortByDesirability() function of the Schedule interface.

What desirability means is up to the user to decide. The SortByDesirability() function can be implemented in any way to sort the Events in the Schedule by any criteria. This can be anything from the length of the Event to the number of coffee breaks you head on that day.

Usage

This package is shared under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE.md file for details.