# How To: Special Date Formats

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-special-date-formats/91590>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 10, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-special-date-formats/91590 "2007-04-10T19:23:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/d6veteran)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-special-date-formats/91590/1 "2007-04-10T19:23:21Z")

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I can’t find how to format dates in Rails.

For example I want to display a datetime as:

“Tuesday, April 10th, 2007”

The closest I’ve been able to get is something like:

foo.created\_at.to\_s(:short)

Is there a way to pass options into the to\_s method?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/d6veteran)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-special-date-formats/91590/2 "2007-04-10T19:32:45Z")

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The “Time” class supports the POSIX standard “strftime()” function…  
This  
should get you everything except the “th” part:

foo.created\_at.strftime(“%A, %B %-e, %Y”);

Cheers,  
Tyler

Arch S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Is there a way to pass options into the to\_s method?
> 
> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> >

–

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@d6veteran](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/d6veteran)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-special-date-formats/91590/3 "2007-04-11T21:32:39Z")

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> I can’t find how to format dates in Rails.  
> For example I want to display a datetime as:  
> “Tuesday, April 10th, 2007”

see:  
[http://whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/pickaxe/html/ref\_c\_time.html#Time.strftime](http://whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/pickaxe/html/ref_c_time.html#Time.strftime)