Rails ActiveSupport Time Parsing?

Question

Rails' ActiveSupport module extends the builtin ruby Time class with a number of methods.

Notably, there is the to_formatted_s method, which lets you write Time.now.to_formatted_s(:db) to get a string in Database format, rather than having to write ugly strftime format-strings everywhere.

My question is, is there a way to go backwards?

Something like Time.parse_formatted_s(:db) which would parse a string in Database format, returning a new Time object. This seems like something that rails should be providing, but if it is, I can't find it.

Am I just not able to find it, or do I need to write it myself?

Thanks

Answer 1

This talks about parsing times in Rails

Answer 2

>> "2009-09-24".to_date
=> Thu, 24 Sep 2009
>> "9/24/2009".to_date
=> Thu, 24 Sep 2009

Works great unless your date is in some weird format.

Answer 3

ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new('UTC').parse('2009-09-23 09:18:08')
=> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:18:08 UTC +00:00