AmericanDateParsing

American-style (e.g 12/25/2014) date parsing for ActiveRecord and ActiveModel.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'american_date_parsing'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Usage

Invoke parse_as_americanized_date in a model.

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  parse_as_americanized_date :activates_on, :expires_on
end

instance = MyModel.new

instance.activates_on = "12/25/2012"
instance.activates_on
# => Tue, 25 Dec 2012

instance.expires_on = Date.new(2012, 12, 25)
instance.expires_on
# => Tue, 25 Dec 2012

Validation

Presence and format validations are added by passing options to parse_as_americanized_date. Note: make sure to include ActiveModel::Validations for ActiveModel subclasses.

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  parse_as_americanized_date :activates_on, validate: {
    presence: true,
    format: true
  }
end

instance = MyModel.new

instance.valid?
instance.errors[:activates_on]
# => ["can't be blank"]

instance.activates_on = "1225-2012"
instance.valid?
instance.errors[:activates_on]
# => ["is invalid"]

instance.activates_on = "12-25-2012"
instance.valid?
instance.errors[:activates_on]
# => []

Custom validation messages

Just as with standard validations, :validate accepts a :message option.

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  parse_as_americanized_date :activates_on, validate: {
    presence: {message: "is required"},
    format: {message: "needs to be formatted as MM/DD/YYYY"}
  }
end

instance = MyModel.new

instance.valid?
instance.errors[:activates_on]
# => ["is required"]

instance.activates_on = "1225-2012"
instance.valid?
instance.errors[:activates_on]
# => ["needs to be formatted as MM/DD/YYYY"]

Alternatively, custom messaging can be acheived via i18n.

en:
  errors:
    attributes:
      activates_on:
        blank: is required
        invalid: needs to be formatted as MM/DD/YYYY

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request