Environment: Rails 2.2.2, Oracle 10g
Most of the columns declared "date" in my ActiveRecord models are exactly that: dates: they don't care about time at all.
So with a model declared thus:#
class MyDateOnlyModel < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :my_date_only_model do |t|
t.date :effective_date
t.timestamps
end
end
end
writing a test like this:
test_date = Date.new(2008,12,05)
MyDateOnlyModel.create!(:effective_date => test_date)
assert_equal test_date, MyDateOnlyModel.find(:first).effective_date
should pass, shouldn't it? (Assuming I didn't mess anything up transcribing the above, of course)
But it doesn't - not quite. I get this:
<Fri, 05 Dec 2008> expected but was
<Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 UTC +00:00>.
So I put a date into the database and got ... well what did I get?
puts MyDateOnlyModel.find(:first).eff_date.class
tells me I actually got a ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone. Which wasn't what I wanted at all.
Is there a simple way to tell ActiveRecord that some (not all) columns are Dates and only Dates?
UPDATE: more complaining...
Yes, I could use to_date:
assert_equal test_date, MyDateOnlyModel.find(:first).effective_date.to_date
works fine. But that's what I'm trying to avoid. I asked AR to make me a date, I want a date back.
And I could add a method to my class, effective_date_as_date - that works too. But surely it's not impossible to just get a date, dagnabbit.
PRE-ACCEPTANCE UPDATE
Eventually I realised why this was a particular problem with Oracle: there is no distinction between DATE and DATETIME, so ActiveRecord can't figure out unaided whether a time of zero means midnight (possibly with time zone corrections) or just the date. Bah. Stupid Oracle. So I'm going to have either to go down the plugin route, change my database (tempting, so very tempting) or continue with the to_date/to_time mess I have at present.