🌴 Vacation Extender 📅

Maximize Your Time Off. Smartly connect public holidays and weekends for the longest possible vacations.

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🚀 Overview

VacationExtender is a smart scheduling program designed to optimize your annual leave. By analyzing public holidays and fixed weekend dates, it identifies the best days to take off, allowing you to "bridge" short working periods and create maximum-length holiday streaks from minimal paid time off.

Perfect for travelers, remote workers, and anyone looking to get the most value out of their vacation days!

✨ Key Features

• Minimal PTO Usage: Prioritizes solutions that yield the longest rest period for the lowest number of paid days used.
• Localization Ready: Easily adaptable to different countries' holiday calendars. (Default: Brazil).
• Simple Output: Provides clear date ranges and the resulting total days of vacation.

🛠️ Installation

Since the package is hosted on PyPI, installation is simple:

pip install vacation-extender

⚡ Quick Start

1. Generate a configuration file: Create a default config.toml in your current folder.

   vacationext init
   

2. Edit the configuration file if needed.

3. Run the optimizer:

   vacationext
   

   Or run with a specific config file:

   vacationext --config your_config_file.toml
   

Expected Output

The program will output a suggested schedule, such as:

==========================================================================================
🌴 EXTENDED VACATION (option 1) 📅
==========================================================================================
BEGIN BREAK  END BREAK    BEGIN PTO    END PTO         PTO  TOTAL        ROI      SCORE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2026-02-14   2026-02-22   2026-02-19   2026-02-20        2      9       4.50      13.50
2026-10-31   2026-11-08   2026-11-05   2026-11-06        2      9       4.50      13.50
2026-11-20   2026-12-31   2026-11-23   2026-12-18       26     42       1.62      10.47
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USED PTO: 30 / 30
TOTAL BREAK DAYS: 60
AVERAGE ROI: 2.00 break days / PTO days
==========================================================================================

🤝 Contribution

We welcome contributions! Whether it's adding a new country's holiday calendar, improving the optimization algorithm, or enhancing the documentation, your help is appreciated.

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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⚙️ Configuration File (config.toml)

The config.toml file is the primary way to define the optimization parameters, including the target calendar, location, and user-specific PTO constraints. You can run the optimizer with a custom configuration file path using the command line (e.g., vacationext --config config_us.toml).

---

📅 [CALENDAR]

These parameters define the basic time structure for the optimization.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
year	Integer	2026	The target year for which the vacation plan will be generated.
weekend	List of Integers	[5, 6]	Defines non-working days. 0 is Monday, 6 is Sunday.

---

🌍 [LOCATION]

These settings tell the VacationExtender which public holiday calendar to load using the holidays library.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
country_code	String	"BR"	The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g., "US", "DE", "BR").
subdivision_code	String	"SP"	Optional code for state/province holidays. Use "" for country-only holidays.
include_observed	Boolean	false	If holidays that fall on a weekend should be shifted and observed on the next weekday (common in the US).

---

🚧 [CONSTRAINTS]

This section defines the user's budget and specific rules for suggesting optimal vacation periods.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
vacation_days	Integer	30	The total PTO (Paid Time Off) budget available for the year. The algorithm will stop when this budget is depleted.
max_vac_periods	Integer	3	The maximum number of separate vacation periods (breaks) the algorithm should suggest.
min_vac_days_per_break	Integer	1	The minimum number of PTO days required to be used for a period to be considered a bridge suggestion.
max_vac_days_per_break	Integer	-1	The maximum number of PTO days you are willing to spend for a single continuous break. Use -1 for no limit.
min_total_days_off	Integer	1	The minimum number of TOTAL days off (PTO + holidays + weekend) that a suggested period must include.
max_total_days_off	Integer	-1	The maximum number of TOTAL days off (PTO + holidays + weekend) that a suggested period can include. Use -1 for no limit.
min_gap_days	Integer	0	The minimum number of days between two vacation periods.
top_n_suggestions	Integer	1	The number of vacation suggestions.
in_holiday_as_pto	Boolean	false	If true, Fixed Days Off (holidays/weekends) inside a continuous vacation span are charged against the PTO budget. If false, only working days consume PTO.
custom_holidays	List of Strings	[]	List of additional non-working days. Supports single days ("YYYY-MM-DD") or ranges ("YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD").
forced_work	List of Strings	[]	List of dates or intervals where work is mandatory. Supports single days ("YYYY-MM-DD") or ranges ("YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD").
must_be_vacation	List of Strings	[]	List of dates or intervals where vacation is mandatory (e.g., family trips or company shutdowns). Supports single days ("YYYY-MM-DD") or ranges ("YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD").
must_start_on	List of Strings	[]	List of specific dates where a vacation period must begin. Each element anchors one of the suggested blocks to that exact date.
must_end_on	List of Strings	[]	List of specific dates where a vacation period must end. Each element anchors one of the suggested blocks to that exact date.
required_months	List of Integers	[]	List of months (1-12) where at least one vacation period must be entirely contained. The number of months selected cannot exceed max_periods.
start_months	List of Integers	[]	List of months where a vacation period must begin (e.g., starts in July, but may end in August).

⚙️ [ALGORITHM]

This section configures the type of optimization algorithm and the specific scoring rule used to prioritize potential vacation breaks.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
algorithm_type	str	optimal	optimal: Uses Dynamic Programming to find the mathematical global maximum. greedy: Selects best ROI first (Fast, heuristic-based).
duration_weight_factor_alpha	float	0.5	The Alpha Factor ($\alpha$) that weights break duration. It calculates priority with the Score $P = \eta \times T^{\alpha}$. Values $\alpha > 0$ penalize short breaks and prioritize longer vacation periods ($T$). Use $0$ for Pure Efficiency ($\eta$).

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🌟 Support the project

If Vacation Extender was useful to you or helped you plan your vacations, please consider giving this repository a star!

This helps the project grow and motivates the creation of new smart solutions. 🚀

Click here to give it a star!