Rails date conversion, invalid date error

Question

I am POSTing data to my Rails API, one of the fields to be set on the created record looks like this:

{
  "sign_date": "04/13/2015"
}

In my Rails API, I'm formatting it like so prior to the data being inserted:

Date.strptime(params[:sign_date], "%m/%d/%Y").strftime("%Y-%m-%d")

However, Rails is spitting back an obscure Invalid Date error. Must the data be of the type Date to create the record and have the date set properly?

What's wrong here?

Answer 1

I get that error when I accidentally try to parse an empty string - check that your parameters are coming through correctly and where you expect them.

> Date.strptime('', '%m/%d/%Y')
ArgumentError: invalid date

Answer 2

I hope this will work,

Try it in Rails Console .

Time.strptime("04/13/2015", "%m/%d/%Y").strftime("%Y-%m-%d")

#Output

"2015-04-13"

Answer 3

Try this Date.strptime(params["sign_date"], "%m/%d/%Y").strftime("%Y-%m-%d")

For more details check Hash with indifferent access