I have ann app that has a start_date and an end_date that is currently in the format Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:00:00 UTC +00:00 and the field type is datetime.
I am needing to convert it into this YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ for the Eventbrite API but I am having little luck.
I have tried iso = Time.iso8601(start_date) but I get the following error TypeError: no implicit conversion of ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone into String
Anyone able to point me in the right direction it would be very much appreciated.
try following:
start_date.iso8601
output
=> "2015-05-06T15:53:51+05:00"
Related
I have a a checkin:datetime field in rails and is using the default utc.
But the issue is that when the user submits the form the checkin date is coming with his local timezone info. So rails will automatically convert this to utc and depending on the difference with his timezone and utc there might be an off of one day.
So how can I change the date to utc without changing values?
Update
This is the only code I use for saving to database.(the utc conversion is done by activerecord(i think) if the passed in value is not utc)
reservation=current_user.reservations.create(reservation_params)
reservation.save
I have found a way to do that. It is not direct conversion as I expected but it works. I changed the form input field to sent a string with just the date and time(without utc).
eg: 2016-07-13 00:00:00
Then in my controller before saving I used below code to parse it to utc.
reservation.check_in= Time.zone.parse(value_from_view)
example:
reservation.check_in= Time.zone.parse('2016-07-13 00:00:00')
This returns Wed, 13 Jul 2016 00:00:00 UTC +00:00 as expected.
In Rails, I see I have a few options to parse a date and a date-time. What is the best practice for parsing dates for the sole purpose of persisting them into the DB via ActiveRecord? And why?
Time.zone.parse(...)
Time.parse(...)
DateTime.parse(...)
Go with Time.zone.parse if you just want to write into ActiveRecord.
DateTime should be avoided. If you're handling dates, you should use Date.parse instead.
Beyond that, it depends on whether the input comes with timezone information, what the current timezone is set to, and whether you want timezones in your data.
Time.zone.parse will return an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone, defaulting to UTC.
> Time.zone.parse("12:30")
=> Thu, 10 May 2012 12:30:00 UTC +00:00
Time.parse will return a Time, with a zone if it's specified in the input, or the local TZ.
> Time.parse("12:30")
=> 2012-05-09 12:30:00 -0700
For a more detailed explanation of Ruby time comparisons and precision, read this blog post:
http://blog.solanolabs.com/rails-time-comparisons-devil-details-etc/
Times that are automatically set by ActiveRecord (e.g. created_at and updated_at) come back as ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone instances.
According to the documentation, ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone and Time have the same API, so Time is what I would use.
On an unrelated note, there are methods to_time and to_datetime that you can call on strings:
"2012-05-09".to_time # => 2012-05-09 00:00:00 UTC
"2012-05-09".to_datetime # => Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000
In trying to parse a date, I have been racking my brain for hours:
Date.today.to_s
=> "06/07/2011"
Date.today
=> Tue, 07 Jun 2011
Date.parse Date.today.to_s
=> Wed, 06 Jul 2011
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default]
=> "%m/%d/%Y"
The default format for to_s is different than the default format for parsing? Why would they do this to me?
Using Rails 3.0.5 with Ruby 1.9.2-p180
UPDATE
So thanks to your answers, I realize that the DATE_FORMATS is a rails thing while Date.format is using the ruby library (correct?). Is there a way then to parse dates/times with the default DATE_FORMAT without using strptime?
Normally, Date.today.to_s would return "2011-06-07", but since you set a default date format, it's using "06/07/2011" instead.
Date.parse easily recognizes the YYYY-MM-DD format, but when it sees 06/07/2011 it thinks that's really DD/MM/YYYY (not MM/DD/YYYY as you're expecting -- keep in mind that Date.parse knows nothing about Rails' default date format you set. The default date format is only for Rails' outputting of Date.to_s).
You can force it to parse a MM/DD/YYYY date like this:
Date.strptime(Date.today.to_s, "%m/%d/%Y")
# => Tue, 07 Jun 2011
I would guess that the to_s method uses a locale option to determine how to write the date.
I dont see how this is an issue though. Date.parse uses heuristics to parse the date so sometimes it will get it wrong.
The Chronic gem (link)solves pretty much all date parsing issues (and yes, they can be quite annoying).
Chronic.parse("06/07/2011")
#=> 2011-06-07 12:00:00 +0000
I added this line of code
self.auth_history.push [start_date, self.coupon_code]
And got this error message
Date is not currently supported; use a UTC Time instance instead.
I also tried start_date.utc, but it didn't work either.
Please help. Thanks.
I got this answer from Seattle Brigade group -
===
I didn't see start_date defined in your code as a key in MongoMapper, so
I'll assume you're creating your own date object, either directly via Ruby,
or wrapped by Rails. As far as I know, and someone please correct me, Mongo
stores dates as UTC time in milliseconds since epoch. So when you define a
key with a :date mapping in MongoMapper, you're wrapping a Time object in
Ruby.
Therefore, if you want to store a date inside of Mongo, and it wasn't
created by MongoMapper, make sure you create a Time object in UTC.
MongoMapper comes with a Date mixin method called to_mongo that you can use.
>> Time.now.utc
=> Fri Jan 28 03:47:50 UTC 2011
>> require 'date'
=> true
>> date = Date.today
=> #<Date: 4911179/2,0,2299161>
>> Time.utc(date.year, date.month, date.day)
=> Thu Jan 27 00:00:00 UTC 2011
>> require 'rubygems'
=> true
>> require 'mongo_mapper'
=> true
>> Date.to_mongo(date)
=> Thu Jan 27 00:00:00 UTC 2011
But watch out for the time change.
>> Date.to_mongo(Time.now)
=> Thu Jan 27 00:00:00 UTC 2011
>> Date.to_mongo(Time.now.utc)
=> Fri Jan 28 00:00:00 UTC 2011
Good luck.
===
And by using
Date.to_mongo(start_date)
it works for me.
First, I think the question title is bad in description. Actually, the difference between different timezone is on Time not on Date. So, it's really not proper to say I want to convert a date to UTC format.
Here is another way in Ruby to convert DateTime to its UTC format:
DateTime.now.new_offset(0)
Here's another option:
Time.at(Date.today.to_datetime.to_i).utc
Here I am using Date.today as an arbitrary example date. Replace with whatever date you want to convert. Once the date is converted to a Time instance, it can be serialized to BSON without any problem, as Time is a supported primitive type, that is to say, it can be saved using MongoMapper to the database.
As per EfratBlaier's comment I have updated the answer.
Date.today.to_time.utc
I am getting the following error:
TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert "2010-01-02 23:28:17 UTC" to Date.
I am using WebORB to transfer data between Rails and Flex. The data coming from Rails is of type: 'ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone'. I am trying to assign it to a Flex 'Date' data type.
What am I missing?
From the documentation: http://www.adobe.com/livedocs/flex/3/langref/Date.html#Date()
If you pass a string to the Date class constructor, the date can be in a variety of formats, but must at least include the month, date, and year. For example, Feb 1 2005 is valid, but Feb 2005 is not. The following list indicates some of the valid formats:
Day Month Date Hours:Minutes:Seconds GMT Year (for instance, "Tue Feb 1 00:00:00 GMT-0800 2005", which matches toString())
I think in Rails, what you need to do is calling strftime to format the date output that's going to be sent to Flex
time_with_zone.strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %z %Y") # => "Sun Jan 03 20:58:16 +0700 2010"
Thanks for the help but, oddly, that wasn't it. Your help, Sikachu, did put me on the right track. I couldn't simply assign the returned result--I had to feed it into the constructor. So, instead of doing this, which didn't work:
var flexDate:Date = server_result.date;
I did this, which works:
var flexDate:Date = new Date(server_result.date);