27 Jul 2013 • on dates times

Ruby Strftime

Instead of piecing together Ruby strftime strings to use for various formats each time, I’m making this post to store common variations for me to reference later.

I used the legend posted by annaswims on ApiDock.com to piece these together. Thanks Anna.

# Pretty Abbreviated
Time.now.strftime("%a %b %d, %Y %l:%M:%S %p %Z") # => "Fri Jul 26, 2013  3:06:04 PM PDT"

# Pretty Long
Time.now.strftime("%A %B %d, %Y %l:%M:%S %p %Z") # => "Friday July 26, 2013  3:06:53 PM PDT"

# Short but Human
Time.now.strftime("%-m/%d/%y - %-l:%M:%S %p %Z") # => "7/26/13 - 3:10:15 PM PDT"

# Logger Style
Time.now.strftime("%m/%d/%y - %H:%M:%S %Z") # "07/26/13 - 15:13:53 PDT"

# ISO8601 format
Time.now.utc.strftime('%FT%H:%MZ') # => "2013-07-26T22:15Z"

# DateTime format used with ActiveRecord
Time.now.utc.strftime('%F %H:%M:%S') # => "2013-07-26 22:19:09"