Question

I am using Ruby on Rails v3.2.2 and I would like to display a data as-like <day_number> <month_name> <year_number>. That is, I have a datetime database table column and I would like to change its contained values, for example, from 2012-04-27 00:00:00 to 27 april 2012.

How can I make that?

Answer 1

The standard way is use rails localization.

model

I18n.l(datetime, :format => :short)

controller

I18n.l(datetime, :format => :long)

view

<%= l(datetime), :format => :custom %>

config/locales/en.yml

en:
  time:
    formats:
      long: "%A %B %d %Y | %I:%M %p GMT"
      short: "%d %B %Y, %H:%M GMT"
      custom: "your custom format"
  date:
    formats:
      short: "%d %B %Y"
      long: "%A %B %d %Y"
      custom: "your custom format"

In your case the format should be “%d %A %Y”.

The benefit is if you want to change format you can do it in one place for all datetimes which you are using.