Format the date using Ruby on Rails

Question

The flickr api provides a posted date as unix timestamp one   The posted date is always passed around as a unix timestamp  which is an unsigned integer specifying the number of seconds since Jan 1st 1970 GMT    For example  here is the date  1100897479   How do I format it using Ruby on Rails

User · Answer

Easiest is to use strftime  docs    If it s for use on the view side  better to wrap it in a helper  though

User · Answer

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    Then to format it nicely in the view  you can just use to s  for the default formatting     lt    my date to s   gt    Note that if you don t put to s  it will still be called by default if you use it in a view or in a string e g  the following will also call to s on the date    lt     Here is a date    my date     gt    or if you want the date formatted in a specific way  eg using  d m Y   - you can use strftime as outlined in the other answer

User · Answer

Have a look at localize  or l   eg   l Time at 1100897479

User · Answer

Since the timestamps are seconds since the UNIX epoch  you can use DateTime strptime   string parse time   with the correct specifier   Date strptime  1100897479     s      gt    lt Date  2004-11-19   2453329j 0s 0n   0s 2299161j  gt  Date strptime  1100897479     s   to s    gt   2004-11-19  DateTime strptime  1100897479     s      gt    lt DateTime  2004-11-19T20 51 19 00 00   2453329j 75079s 0n   0s 2299161j  gt  DateTime strptime  1100897479     s   to s    gt   2004-11-19T20 51 19 00 00    Note that you have to require  date  for that to work  then you can call it either as Date strptime  if you only care about the date   or DateTime strptime  if you want date and time   If you need different formatting  you can call DateTime strftime  look at strftime net if you have a hard time with the format strings  on it or use one of the built-in methods like rfc822

User · Answer

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                         gt  Thu Jan 18 06 10 17 CST 2007      time to formatted s  time               gt   06 10  time to s  time                         gt   06 10       time to formatted s  db                 gt   2007-01-18 06 10 17  time to formatted s  number             gt   20070118061017  time to formatted s  short              gt   18 Jan 06 10  time to formatted s  long               gt   January 18  2007 06 10  time to formatted s  long ordinal       gt   January 18th  2007 06 10  time to formatted s  rfc822             gt   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        gt   Printed on 04 09 2003     t strftime  at  I  M p                 gt   at 08 56AM    Hope this helped you  I ve also made a github gist of this little guide  in case anyone prefers

User · Answer

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                         gt  Thu Jan 18 06 10 17 CST 2007  time to formatted s  time               gt   06 10  time to s  time                         gt   06 10   time to formatted s  db                 gt   2007-01-18 06 10 17  time to formatted s  number             gt   20070118061017  time to formatted s  short              gt   18 Jan 06 10  time to formatted s  long               gt   January 18  2007 06 10  time to formatted s  long ordinal       gt   January 18th  2007 06 10  time to formatted s  rfc822             gt   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

User · Answer

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   -

[ruby-on-rails] Format the date using Ruby on Rails

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