Ruby Quicktips

Parse a string into a DateTime object. Controlled.

Just as you can format a string from a Time object with Time#strftime, you can also parse a string in a defined format into a DateTime or Date object, using DateTime#strptime or Date#strptime respectively (Date#strptime only creates a date without the time, though).

require 'date'

parsed_time = DateTime.strptime('03/05/2010 14:25:00', '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S')

parsed_time.to_s
=> "2010-05-03T14:25:00+00:00"

See the docs for more info: DateTime#strptime and Date#strptime.