Format the date using Ruby on Rails

Question

The flickr api provides a posted date as unix timestamp one: "`The posted date is always passed around as a unix timestamp, which is an unsigned integer specifying the number of seconds since Jan 1st 1970 GMT.`" For example, here is the date '`1100897479`'. How do I format it using Ruby on Rails?

Accepted Answer

Once you have parsed the timestamp string and have a time object (see other answers for details), you can use Time.to_formatted_s from Rails. It has several formats built in that you can specify with symbols.

Quote:

```
time = Time.now                     # => Thu Jan 18 06:10:17 CST 2007

time.to_formatted_s(:time)          # => "06:10"
time.to_s(:time)                    # => "06:10"

time.to_formatted_s(:db)            # => "2007-01-18 06:10:17"
time.to_formatted_s(:number)        # => "20070118061017"
time.to_formatted_s(:short)         # => "18 Jan 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long)          # => "January 18, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:long_ordinal)  # => "January 18th, 2007 06:10"
time.to_formatted_s(:rfc822)        # => "Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:10:17 -0600"
```

(Time.to_s is an alias)

You can also define your own formats - usually in an initializer (Thanks to Dave Newton for pointing this out). This is how it's done:

```
# config/initializers/time_formats.rb
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:month_and_year] = "%B %Y"
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:short_ordinal] = lambda { |time| time.strftime("%B #{time.day.ordinalize}") }
```

Format the date using Ruby on Rails

Solution

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