Rails formatting date

Question

I am posting a date to an API and the required format is as follows:

2014-12-01T01:29:18

I can get the date from the model like so:

Answer 1

Since I18n is the Rails core feature starting from version 2.2 you can use its localize-method. By applying the forementioned strftime %-variables you can specify the desired format under config/locales/en.yml (or whatever language), in your case like this:

time:
  formats:
    default: '%FT%T'

Or if you want to use this kind of format in a few specific places you can refer it as a variable like this

time:
  formats:
    specific_format: '%FT%T'

After that you can use it in your views like this:

l(Mode.last.created_at, format: :specific_format)