Prim and proper dates

Since Rails will automatially maintain "created_on" and/or "updated_on" fields if you create them in your database, most everyone adds them (by most everyone I mean myself and....well, no....just myself). Having these date fields is all fine and dandy but honestly,

Fri Nov 18 00:10:53 Mountain Standard Time 2005 (FNMST for short)

aint gonna cut it in today's ajaxed,web-two-dot-oh world. So, how do you make your dates look decent enough to be normal? Why with .strftime() of course. Say you have a created_on datetime field in your database and you're calling it in a view with a little

<%= book.created_on %>

action. Purty it up by adding strftime like so:

<%= book.created_on.strftime("%m-%d-%y") %>

I bet you already figured out what the m, d and y stand for. If not, for shame! Fret not though, you do have more options to choose from, here's a list I found in the Ruby documentation (in the help files actually)

Time#strftime directives Format Meaning %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) %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

Enjoy!