How to display the current date in “mm/dd/yyyy” format in Rails

Question

In my view I want to display the current date in \"mm/dd/yyyy\" format.

Answer 1

You could simply do (substitute in Time for DateTime if using straight Ruby -- i.e. no Rails):

DateTime.now.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

If you're using that format a lot, you might want to create a date_time_formats initializer in your RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers folder (assuming Rails 2), something like this:

# File: date_time_formats.rb
ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Conversions::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(
  :human => "%m/%d/%Y"
)

Which will then let you use the more friendly version of DateTime.now.to_s(:human) in your code.