How to check if a string is a valid date
require 'date'begin Date.parse("31-02-2010")rescue ArgumentError # handle invalid dateend
Here is a simple one liner:
DateTime.parse date rescue nilI probably wouldn't recommend doing exactly this in every situation in real life as you force the caller to check for nil, eg. particularly when formatting. If you return a default date|error it may be friendlier.
d, m, y = date_string.split '-'Date.valid_date? y.to_i, m.to_i, d.to_i