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

This can be handled DRYly at the model layer using the Rails-provided <attribute>_before_type_cast method variant. Rails already uses this method for doing just this type of formatting, so we're just overwriting the default. For example:

class MyModel
   def start_date_before_type_cast
      return unless self[:start_date]
      self[:start_date].strftime('%m/%d/%Y')
   end
end

This way, anywhere you have a text field for the MyModel#start_date field you get formatting for "free".

Answer 2

In a helper

def l(value, options = {})
   return nil unless value.present?
   value = value.to_date if value.is_a? String
   super(value, options)
end

Then in the view

<%= f.text_field :end_date, class: "datepicker" :value => l(@activity.end_date) %>

Here l is a rails helper (I18n.l) which can be locale specific and can take a format. Examples:

l(@activity.end_date, format: :short)
l(@activity.end_date, format: "%d-%m-%Y")

Answer 3

I can think of three ways:

1) Creating a new method on the model that would format your date however you need it to be

2) Creating a helper method that would do the same

3) Have you tried doing:

<%= text_field 
   :my_object,
   :start_date,
   :value => @my_object.try(:start_date).try(:strftime,'%m/%d/%Y') %>

Answer 4

If your form is tied to an object, (something like <% form_for(:object) do |f| %>) you should use <%= f.text_field :start_date, :value => f.object.start_date.to_s(:date_format) %>

then you can register your :date_format in config/environment.rb

Not sure why you want to do this, but i hope it's for presentation purposes only.

Answer 5

if you don't want to enter the date in a textfield, but in a less error prone select field, you could use the ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper, select_date(). see Accessing date() variables send from the date helper in rails here on SO on how to process the return values.

Answer 6

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'))