Format DateTime in Text Box in Rails

Question

Is there an easy way to format the display of a DateTime value in a Rails view?

For example, if I\'m doing something like:

<%= text_field         


        

Answer 1

Some great suggestions here, however in those cases where you really do want your text field date formatted a specific way (say you're integrating with a javascript date picker), and you're dealing with nils, I think simply making a minor tweak to your existing method would do the trick:

:value => (@object.start_date.blank? ? '' : @object.start_date.strftime('%m/%d/%Y'))