rails helper function to return the most recent date

ruby, ruby-on-rails, ruby-on-rails-3, ruby-on-rails-3.1

Solution

The `.max` method will do it for you ;)

> [Date.today, (Date.today + 2.days) ].max
#=> Fri, 05 Jul 2013

Documentation about it (Ruby 2.0):

- http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.0/Enumerable.html#method-i-max

You may need to parse the data into Dates, if they are strings, you can use:

dates = ["2012-10-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2012-11-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2013-10-10T22:11:52.000Z"]
dates = dates.map{ |date_str| Date.parse(date_str) }
dates.max #=> returns the maximum date of the Array

See in my irb console (Ruby 1.9.3):

> dates = ["2012-10-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2012-11-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2013-10-10T22:11:52.000Z"]
#=> ["2012-10-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2012-11-10T22:11:52.000Z", "2013-10-10T22:11:52.000Z"] 
> dates = dates.map{ |date_str| Date.parse(date_str) }
#=> [Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Sat, 10 Nov 2012, Thu, 10 Oct 2013] 
> dates.max
#=> Thu, 10 Oct 2013

(use `DateTime.parse(date_str)` if you want to keep the Time also)

Problem

I need to Write rails helper method to return the most recent date. So far this is my method ``` def latest_date(value_dates) value_dates.each |value_date| do my_dates << value_date end ``` I need to sort the above array and return just the latest date. The date is in the following format: ``` 2012-10-10T22:11:52.000Z ``` Is there a sort method for date?

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