How can I customize Rails' date parsing from params?

Question

I want to format dates in jQuery using the UI datepicker like this:

Sunday - 11/28/2010

How/where can I plug in a custom parser for Rails to make it so this works:

def create
  puts params[:event] #=> {"my_date"=>"Sunday - 11/28/2010"}
  event = Event.new(params[:event])
  puts event.my_date #=> nil
end

This works:

def create
  puts params[:event] #=> {"my_date"=>"11/28/2010"}
  event = Event.new(params[:event])
  puts event.my_date #=> Mon, 22 Nov 2010
end

What's the Rails way to do this?

Answer 1

You could use Chronic, a natural language date/time parser

Time.now   #=> Sun Aug 27 23:18:25 PDT 2006

Chronic.parse('tomorrow')
#=> Mon Aug 28 12:00:00 PDT 2006

Chronic.parse('monday', :context => :past)
#=> Mon Aug 21 12:00:00 PDT 2006

Chronic.parse('this tuesday 5:00')
#=> Tue Aug 29 17:00:00 PDT 2006

Chronic.parse('may 27th', :guess => false)
#=> Sun May 27 00:00:00 PDT 2007..Mon May 28 00:00:00 PDT 2007

http://chronic.rubyforge.org/

Answer 2

params[:event][:my_date] = Date.parse(params[:event][:my_date])  
event = Event.new(params[:event])

Answer 3

Exactly what you want:

http://www.mobalean.com/blog/2010/11/19/seamless-rails-integration-with-jquery-tools-dateinput