Question

I have a date column in one of my models

  create_table "jobs", :force => true do |t|
    t.date     "due_date"
  end

When I create a Job and then try to edit it, the date is not formatted the way I’d like in the form. What I want to see is “27 Sep 2012”. What I actually see is:

I found this question which implies that I can change the default date formats in an initializer. In config/initializers/date_time_formats.rb I have:

Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default] = "%d %B %Y"
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:db] = "%d %B %Y"

When I run the rails console and inspect the Date::DATE_FORMATS hash I see this (which looks correct):

{:short=>"%e %b", :long=>"%B %e, %Y", :db=>"%d %B %Y", :number=>"%Y%m%d", :long_ordinal=>#<Proc:0x007fce4509f9c8@/Users/davidtuite/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.2.7/lib/active_support/core_ext/date/conversions.rb:12 (lambda)>, :rfc822=>"%e %b %Y", :default=>"%d %B %Y"}

I have restarted my server since making the initializer.

What am I doing wrong? I’m using Rails 3.2.7.

Answer 1

Only way I can seem to get this working is by faking a form_for input format and changing the default date format.

# config/initializers/date_time_format.rb
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default] = "%d %B %Y"

# jobs/edit.html.erb
<%= form_for @job do |f| %>
  <%= text_field_tag 'job[due_date]', f.object.due_date %>
<% end %>