Format the date using Ruby on Rails

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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}") }

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