Ruby on Rails - how to display a date in format i need? Converting from YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS UTC to MM/DD/YYYY

In Rails you can use the to_time function on a string to convert it into a Date object:

'2012-11-14 14:27:46'.to_time.strftime('%B %e at %l:%M %p')#=> "November 14 at 2:27 PM"

For a handy, interactive reference guide, refer to http://www.foragoodstrftime.com/

Date.strptime(  "2009-04-24 18:33:41 UTC",  "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z").strftime("%m/%d/%Y")# => "04/24/2009"

I think maybe you just got the capitalization on your format strings wrong.

Check the active support documentation and examples at:http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/DateTime/Conversions/to_formatted_s

Examples

datetime = DateTime.civil(2007, 12, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0)   # => Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000datetime.to_formatted_s(:db)            # => "2007-12-04 00:00:00"datetime.to_s(:db)                      # => "2007-12-04 00:00:00"datetime.to_s(:number)                  # => "20071204000000"datetime.to_formatted_s(:short)         # => "04 Dec 00:00"datetime.to_formatted_s(:long)          # => "December 04, 2007 00:00"datetime.to_formatted_s(:long_ordinal)  # => "December 4th, 2007 00:00"datetime.to_formatted_s(:rfc822)        # => "Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000"

Or if you really want to customise it, define the helper like:

def custom_format(time)  Time::DATE_FORMATS[:w3cdtf] = lambda { |time| time.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S# {time.formatted_offset}") }end