Question

I have a string, the value of this string is an rss date. I want to convert the value of this string / the rss date into another format (MM-DD-YY HH:MM). Any ideas how to do this?

This is an extract of what I got so far…

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rss/2.0'
require 'rss/content'

[...]

date = rss.items[i].pubDate
date = #Here I want to convert the date
puts date

[...]

Answer 1

Use Date.parse to get a Date object from a string and then Date#strftime to format it correctly.

• http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/date/rdoc/Date.html#method-c-parse
• http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.9.3/libdoc/date/rdoc/Date.html#method-i-strftime

Here’s a strftime example:

Time.now.strftime("%m-%d-%Y %H:%M") #=> "03-27-2012 12:03