How can I make Rails 3 localize my date formats?

Question

I am working on a Rails 3 project where there is place for date input within a form. The text field with the date uses a date picker so there is no concern about the date being

Answer 1

You could override your getters for the :publish_date attribute.

i.e. in your model:

def date( *format)
    self[:publish_date].strftime(format.first || default)
end

and in your view you could do either

@income.date("%d/%m/%Y")

or

@income.date

This would cause strftime to use the passed format string unless it was nil, in which case it would fall back to your default string.

Note: I used the splat operator to add support for getting the date without an argument. There may be a cleaner way to do that.