Question

Is it possible to create a column or to change one to type date with default format?
something like:

def change
    change_column :mytable, :mydate, :date [:default]="%d/%m/%Y"
end

Answer 1

To my knowledge no. But why on Earth would you want to do that?

Rails will pull out a date and automagically make it a Date/Time (according to your column type) object. If you need to display your date differently I strongly suggest the use of strftime like so:

@foo.created_at.strftime('%F')

Here’s a list of the different options: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Time.html#method-i-strftime

Update

Make use of decorators with Draper: https://github.com/drapergem/draper

I would recommend renaming the method but for now if you don’t want to you could simply override it doing this:

# app/decorators/article_decorator.rb
class ArticleDecorator < Draper::Decorator
  delegate_all

  def published_at
    source.published_at.strftime("%A, %B %e")
  end
end

You would it like so:

@article.decorate.published_at

In it’s default state, the date returned will not be formatted which is fine.

If you have to do where("date.strftime('%d/%m/%Y') >= ?",fdate, you’re doing it wrong. Again, stick to the default format.