Current date in rails form

Question

Hi,
Im learning rails and exploring a bit away from the book and creating a simple application with added functionality as i increase my knowledge. Im writing a simple blog application and i have a field in the form called date added, i don't want this to be a field i want it to get the date from the server and place it in to the database automatically. How would i go about doing this? I was thinking of a hidden field but then unsure on how to process the date and insert it to the hidden field. Is this the wrong way of going about things?
Thanks in Advance,
Dean

Answer 1

I would not use a hidden field, because even if it is hidden the user can manipulate this. I think the best way to solve this problem is, ignore the date in the form and add the date to you your model in the controller action right before saving the object:

def SomeController
  #...
  def create
    @model = Model.new params[:model]
    @model.date_field_name = Time.now
    if @model.save
      # whatever should be done if validation passes or
      redirect_to @model
    else
      # whatever should be done if validation fails or
      render :new
    end
  end
  #...
end

But you don't have to do any of this, because ruby on rails offers the two columns created_at and updated_at. created_at will be set when the object gets created and updated_at will be set every time when you update this object.

Answer 2

In Rails if you give your models attributes with certain names then ActiveRecord gives them special behaviour. There are four different date/time related ones:

• created_on: gets automatically set to the date the record was created
• created_at: gets automatically set to the date and time the record was created
• updated_on: gets automatically set to the date the record was updated
• updated_at: gets automatically set to the date and time the record was updated

Typically the created_at/updated_at pair get added to a model automatically by the t.timestamps declaration in the model's associated ActiveRecord Migration.

Answer 3

Hi, here is the view (new) of a form displaying the current date :

<% form_for(@recipe) do |f| %>
  <%= f.error_messages %>

  <p>
    <%= f.label :title %><br />
    <%= f.text_field :title %>
  </p>
  <p><b>date</b><br/>
    <%= f.datetime_select :date %>
  </p>
  <p>
    <%= f.label :instructions %><br />
    <%= f.text_area :instructions %>
  </p>
  <p>
    <%= f.submit 'Create' %>
  </p>
<% end %>

<%= link_to 'Back', recipes_path %>

and the controller :

def new
  @recipe = Recipe.new

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html # new.html.erb
    format.xml  { render :xml => @recipe }
  end
end