# Possible to get month names as values when using date:select

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/possible-to-get-month-names-as-values-when-using-date-select/105862>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 4, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/possible-to-get-month-names-as-values-when-using-date-select/105862 "2007-06-04T00:31:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sharon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@sharon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sharon)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/possible-to-get-month-names-as-values-when-using-date-select/105862/1 "2007-06-04T00:31:50Z")

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I’m working on a project where a user will be entering a date from a  
form, and that date will be compared to a date that’s being pulled from  
an RSS feed. The RSS feed date format is

03 Jun 2007

so I was hoping to get my form date to use the same format. When I use

\<%= f.date\_select :thedate, :use\_short\_month =\> true %\>

on my form, the presentation to the user on the form shows Jun but the  
value is 6.

Is there some way to get the form to show the values as the abbreviated  
month name as well? Or is there another way someone could suggest that I  
easily compare the 03 Jun 2007 format date to the 2007-06-03 format date  
that’s being stored in my database? (Beyond writing my own function  
mapping them, it seems to me there must be something that would help do  
this.)

Thanks,

Sharon