How do I create a Ruby date object from this string "DD-MM-YYYY"?

Question

How do I create a Ruby date object from this string "DD-MM-YYYY"?

Answer 1

You can use Time#parse.

Time.parse("20-08-2010")
# => Fri Aug 20 00:00:00 +0200 2010

However, because Ruby could parse the date as "MM-DD-YYYY", the best way is to go with DateTime#strptime where you can specify the input format.

Answer 2

Date.parse('31-12-2010')

Alternatively Date#strptime(str, format).