Hi,
I’m stuck. How do you parse a “dd/mm/yyyy” formatted date string???
I get a date format error.
Thanks in advance
Greg
s = “06/07/2008”
d = Date.parse(s)
I get an ArgumentError: Invalid Date?
I’m on:
Ruby 1.8.6
Rails 2.0.2
Any ideas?
It’s supposed to be strptime, to match Time.strftime to output a date
in a
given format. Googling for that seems to yield either people using
strptime or
complaining about it.
I found on the Ruby forum the following:
Date.strptime(‘28/03/2008’, ‘%d/%m/%Y’)
Greg H. wrote:
Hi,
I’m stuck. How do you parse a “dd/mm/yyyy” formatted date string???
‘12/14/1981’.to_date
=> Mon, 14 Dec 1981
‘12/14/1981’.to_time
=> Mon Dec 14 00:00:00 UTC 1981
Easy things should be easy.
#to_date or #to_time will throw an ArgumentError for the format Greg
is working with, dd/mm/yyyy,
best.
mike
I’m stuck. How do you parse a “dd/mm/yyyy” formatted date string???
‘12/14/1981’.to_date
=> Mon, 14 Dec 1981‘12/14/1981’.to_time
=> Mon Dec 14 00:00:00 UTC 1981Easy things should be easy.
In what locale? (-:
funny, this isn’t working for me…
If the date helpers aren’t being kind:
if date_string =~ %r{(\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+)}
Date::civil($3.to_i, $2.to_i, $1.to_i)
end
Fred
Phlip wrote:
I’m stuck. How do you parse a “dd/mm/yyyy” formatted date string???
‘12/14/1981’.to_date
=> Mon, 14 Dec 1981‘12/14/1981’.to_time
=> Mon Dec 14 00:00:00 UTC 1981Easy things should be easy.
In what locale? (-:
Difficult things should be possible. 
Michael B. wrote:
#to_date or #to_time will throw an ArgumentError for the format Greg
is working with, dd/mm/yyyy,best.
mike
Did you run the code in console? Try it.
yeah, I tried in the console using the format that Greg is working
with (dd/mm/yyyy). Your example works fine (mm/dd/yyyy).
‘14/12/1981’.to_date
ArgumentError: invalid date
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/
ruby/1.8/date.rb:727:innew' from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/core_ext/string/conversions.rb:19:into_date’
from (irb):1‘14/12/1981’.to_time
ArgumentError: invalid date
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/
ruby/1.8/date.rb:1482:incivil' from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/core_ext/time/calculations.rb:39:intime_with_datetime_fallback’
from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/
active_support/core_ext/time/calculations.rb:44:inutc_time' from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/ active_support/core_ext/string/conversions.rb:15:insend’
from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/
active_support/core_ext/string/conversions.rb:15:in `to_time’
from (irb):2
That’s really odd… you might want to try doing a Time.parse(s)
also…
Thanks for the tip about #to_date and #to_time. You gotta love Rails
ActiveSupport!
On Jun 8, 2:10 pm, Daniel W. [email protected]
Greg,
This is the hard part of following this forum…where is the oyster
that has the pearl?
I see you excellent bit of information in;
Date.strptime(‘28/03/2008’, ‘%d/%m/%Y’)
Obviously, this code is in your controller. It the field on the left
of the parens supposed to be the params[] that was passed from the
form.
Dates are so screwy in Ruby. I’ve never been able to figure out or see
anyone take a date from a user in a form_tag (non model input) and
process it into the controller.
I’ve recently take the ridiculous ‘long way around the barn’ and
instaniated a DATE field object in a placebo table to accept the
value;
example;
y = Badboy.new
y.playdate = row[1]
if @asset.mtxes.find(:first, :conditions => {:mdate =>
y.playdate })
@asset.mtxes.find(:first, :conditions => {:mdate =>
y.playdate }).destroy
end
Badboy is a table that’s simply being instantiated for the brief time
that I need to borrow a WORKING datefield object.
Pretty crazy, huh?
Kathleen
On Jun 8, 12:39 am, “Greg H.” [email protected]
On 9 Jun 2008, at 16:21, [email protected] wrote:
anyone take a date from a user in a form_tag (non model input) and
process it into the controller.
if you’re doing that then you don’t need to be messing around with
parsing strings. As part of the params you get a hash, so (by default)
the respective components of the date are params[:date][:year],
params[:date][:month] and params[:date][:day]. Just call to_i on these
and pass them to Time.mktime or Date::civil
Fred
thanks guys but, the issue in my use case is that I’m actually uploading
a
CSV file and then parsing it - so it’s actually the CSV parsing routines
that I’m using directly. So my questions was more around Ruby data
handling
I guess than Rails (as in my use case I’m not really using Rails
directly)
Cheers
Greg
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:26 AM, Frederick C. <
Michael B. wrote:
yeah, I tried in the console using the format that Greg is working
with (dd/mm/yyyy). Your example works fine (mm/dd/yyyy).
Oi. Yay me for not paying closer attention. You’re right, mm/dd/yyyy
does not get parsed by #to_date or #to_time. My apologies.
To the OT, because you know the format is mm/dd, flip them around first?
If I could get to my array#fold method we could do it in one, short
line, but alas… my site is down. So temporary variable here we go…
components = ‘14/12/1981’.split(’/’)
good_date = components[1] + ‘/’ + # you get the idea…
good_date.to_date
I’m sure someone else has a nicer solution.
Hello,
I have been facing the same problem as Greg, but unfortunately neither
of these worked for me 
dateStr = params[:startdate].to_s
logger.info "date - " + dateStr
startdate =Date.strptime(dateStr, ‘%m/%d/%Y’).to_s
gives me -
date - 05/16/2008
ArgumentError: invalid date
Quite surprisingly, the dateStr being printed seems to be quite
correct yet the invalid date exception is thrown !! The same thing
happens with the Date.parse too… I have been trying to resolve this
for quite some time now and any help in this would be great !
~Titan
On Jun 11, 5:34 am, Daniel W. [email protected]
Thanks, Mike. the to_time did work for me :). However to_date still
keeps throwing out the same error.
Just in case this is version specific, I’m using rails 1.1.6 and ruby
1.8.4.
~Titan