Rails undefined method `strftime' for "2013-03-06":String

Question

I am getting the error

undefined method `strftime' for "2013-03-06":String

when trying to display a date normally (June Sunday 3, 2013 or something similar) from the string 2013-03-06 using strftime.

The line that does this in my index.html.erb and looks like this

<td><%= task.duedate.strftime("%B %e, %Y") %></td>

I am just learning Rails so I am sure it is just a stupid beginners error, any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Solution 1

It looks like your duedate is a string, when strftime is a method for Time/Date class. You can try this:

Date.parse(task.duedate).strftime("%B %e, %Y")

Solution 2

This solved the issue for me:

Date.created_at.try(:strftime, ("%B %e, %Y"))

Hope this helps!

Comments

[Hackerman]

Example: d = Date.today # 2008-08-12 d.strftime(‘%b %d, %Y’) # will print August 12, 2008

[Marcelo De Polli]

Is there a special reason why your duedate field is not of the Date or DateTime types?

[thewillcole]

I just ran into this issue after adding and populating a date-column in a migration. The solution was simply restarting (I guess Rails didn't know the attribute was a date until then?).

[Xander]

This worked for me - since sometimes values are a null 😁 Thank you