# Date Conversion

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/date-conversion/186135>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 1, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/date-conversion/186135 "2010-04-01T00:23:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sav)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/date-conversion/186135/1 "2010-04-01T00:23:54Z")

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Can someone help me format the following date into a db-friendly  
datetime value?

Here is the date I get from an XML file…  
xmldate = “2010-03-31T07:47:46 -500”

But xmldate.to\_datetime isn’t handling the timezone…  
2010-03-31T07:47:46+00:00

Any ideas how I get to this?..  
2010-03-31T07:47:46-05:00

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Sav](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sav)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 10:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/date-conversion/186135/2 "2010-04-01T10:05:44Z")

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Hi,

Please, try it:

DateTime.parse(“2010-03-31T07:47:46 -500”).to\_s