Format the date using Ruby on Rails

Solution 1:

Once you have parsed the timestamp string and have a time object (see other answers for details), you can use Time.to_formatted_s from Rails. It has several formats built in that you can specify with symbols.

Quote:

time = Time.now                     # => Thu Jan 18 06:10:17 CST 2007

time.to_formatted_s(:time)          # => "06:10"
time.to_s(:time)                    # => "06:10"

time.to_formatted_s(:db)            # => "2007-01-18 06:10:17"
time.to_formatted_s(:number)        # => "20070118061017"
time.to_formatted_s(:short)         # => "18 Jan 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long)          # => "January 18, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long_ordinal)  # => "January 18th, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:rfc822)        # => "Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:10:17 -0600"

(Time.to_s is an alias)

You can also define your own formats - usually in an initializer (Thanks to Dave Newton for pointing this out). This is how it's done:

# config/initializers/time_formats.rb
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:month_and_year] = "%B %Y"
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:short_ordinal] = lambda { |time| time.strftime("%B #{time.day.ordinalize}") }

Solution 2:

Here's my go at answering this,

so first you will need to convert the timestamp to an actual Ruby Date/Time. If you receive it just as a string or int from facebook, you will need to do something like this:

my_date = Time.at(timestamp_from_facebook.to_i)

OK, so now assuming you already have your date object...

to_formatted_s is a handy Ruby function that turns dates into formatted strings.

Here are some examples of its usage:

time = Time.now                     # => Thu Jan 18 06:10:17 CST 2007    

time.to_formatted_s(:time)          # => "06:10"
time.to_s(:time)                    # => "06:10"    

time.to_formatted_s(:db)            # => "2007-01-18 06:10:17"
time.to_formatted_s(:number)        # => "20070118061017"
time.to_formatted_s(:short)         # => "18 Jan 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long)          # => "January 18, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long_ordinal)  # => "January 18th, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:rfc822)        # => "Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:10:17 -0600"

As you can see: :db, :number, :short ... are custom date formats.

To add your own custom format, you can create this file: config/initializers/time_formats.rb and add your own formats there, for example here's one:

Date::DATE_FORMATS[:month_day_comma_year] = "%B %e, %Y" # January 28, 2015

Where :month_day_comma_year is your format's name (you can change this to anything you want), and where %B %e, %Y is unix date format.

Here's a quick cheatsheet on unix date syntax, so you can quickly setup your custom format:

From http://linux.die.net/man/3/strftime    

  %a - The abbreviated weekday name (``Sun'')
  %A - The  full  weekday  name (``Sunday'')
  %b - The abbreviated month name (``Jan'')
  %B - The  full  month  name (``January'')
  %c - The preferred local date and time representation
  %d - Day of the month (01..31)
  %e - Day of the month without leading 0 (1..31) 
  %g - Year in YY (00-99)
  %H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)
  %I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01..12)
  %j - Day of the year (001..366)
  %m - Month of the year (01..12)
  %M - Minute of the hour (00..59)
  %p - Meridian indicator (``AM''  or  ``PM'')
  %S - Second of the minute (00..60)
  %U - Week  number  of the current year,
          starting with the first Sunday as the first
          day of the first week (00..53)
  %W - Week  number  of the current year,
          starting with the first Monday as the first
          day of the first week (00..53)
  %w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)
  %x - Preferred representation for the date alone, no time
  %X - Preferred representation for the time alone, no date
  %y - Year without a century (00..99)
  %Y - Year with century
  %Z - Time zone name
  %% - Literal ``%'' character    

   t = Time.now
   t.strftime("Printed on %m/%d/%Y")   #=> "Printed on 04/09/2003"
   t.strftime("at %I:%M%p")            #=> "at 08:56AM"

Hope this helped you. I've also made a github gist of this little guide, in case anyone prefers.

Solution 3:

Easiest is to use strftime (docs).

If it's for use on the view side, better to wrap it in a helper, though.

Solution 4:

@CMW's answer is bang on the money. I've added this answer as an example of how to configure an initializer so that both Date and Time objects get the formatting

config/initializers/time_formats.rb

date_formats = {
  concise: '%d-%b-%Y' # 13-Jan-2014
}

Time::DATE_FORMATS.merge! date_formats
Date::DATE_FORMATS.merge! date_formats

Also the following two commands will iterate through all the DATE_FORMATS in your current environment, and display today's date and time in each format:

Date::DATE_FORMATS.keys.each{|k| puts [k,Date.today.to_s(k)].join(':- ')}
Time::DATE_FORMATS.keys.each{|k| puts [k,Time.now.to_s(k)].join(':- ')}

Solution 5:

Have a look at localize, or l

eg:

l Time.at(1100897479)