OnRails.org: What are all the Rails Date Formats?

What are all the Rails Date Formats?

Lee Marlow — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:54:00 +0000

Ever forget what all the Rails defined Date/DateTime/Time#strftime formats are? Or forget what ones you added to the project yourself?

Ala rake routes comes rake date_formats:

Sample output from a Rails 2.1 app:

Date
====
            db:'%Y-%m-%d'   2008-08-20
  long_ordinal:'&proc'      August 20th, 2008
          long:'%B %e, %Y'  August 20, 2008
        rfc822:'%e %b %Y'   20 Aug 2008
        number:'%Y%m%d'     20080820
         short:'%e %b'      20 Aug

DateTime
========
            db:'%Y-%m-%d'   2008-08-20 16:56:21
  long_ordinal:'&proc'      August 20th, 2008 16:56
          long:'%B %e, %Y'  August 20, 2008 16:56
        rfc822:'%e %b %Y'   Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:56:21 -0600
        number:'%Y%m%d'     20080820165621
         short:'%e %b'      20 Aug 16:56

Time
====
            db:'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'         2008-08-20 16:56:21
  long_ordinal:'&proc'                     August 20th, 2008 16:56
          long:'%B %d, %Y %H:%M'           August 20, 2008 16:56
        rfc822:'%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z'  Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:56:21 -0600
         short:'%d %b %H:%M'               20 Aug 16:56
        number:'%Y%m%d%H%M%S'              20080820165621
          time:'%H:%M'                     16:56

"What are all the Rails Date Formats?" by David Andrew Thompson

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:03:01 +0000

I added it to my rails gem so that new applications I generate will have the new rake task. To add this functionality just add the code to the routes.rake file under the rails gem folder, so:

~/gems/rails-2.1.0/lib/tasks/routes.rake

"What are all the Rails Date Formats?" by Jeremy Pinnix

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:35:50 +0000

Excellent job Lee. I just added this output as a cheat sheet:

$ cheat rails_date_formats

"What are all the Rails Date Formats?" by Luke Francl

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:12:31 +0000

Cool! I just added it to my application. It’s nice to see them all in one place.