Reputation: 27242

How to parse time field into hours, minutes and seconds?

How would I parse my start_at column to be three different fields for hours, minutes and seconds instead of just one?

Note: I want to keep it as one column and not make three different ones.

Here is my code:

Table:

class CreateTimers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :timers do |t|
      t.time :start_at

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Form:

<%= form_for(@timer) do |f| %>

  <div class="form-inputs">
    <%= f.text_field :start_at %>
  </div>

  <div class="form-actions">
    <%= f.submit 'Start', :class => 'btn-primary span3' %>
  </div>
<% end %>

Upvotes: 2

Answers (5)

the Tin Man

Reputation: 160631

You don't say what format your time values are in. Because users love to be different, if you give them a free-form text field, odds are really good you'll get data in varying formats, so you'll have to be flexible.

You can try using DateTime's parse method, which provides some flexibility for the formats.

DateTime.parse('2001-02-03T04:05:06+07:00')
#=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+07:00 ...>

DateTime.parse('20010203T040506+0700')
#=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+07:00 ...>

DateTime.parse('3rd Feb 2001 04:05:06 PM')
#=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T16:05:06+00:00 ...>

There's also the Chronic gem, which allows even more flexibility in how the values can be entered.

Once you have a DateTime or Time value, you can use that object's methods to get at the hour, minute and second fields:

now = Time.now # => 2012-10-03 07:50:26 -0700
now.hour       # => 7
now.min        # => 50
now.sec        # => 26

or:

require 'date'
now = DateTime.now # => #<DateTime: 2012-10-03T07:52:53-07:00 ((2456204j,53573s,622304000n),-25200s,2299161j)>
now.hour # => 7
now.min  # => 52
now.sec  # => 53

Upvotes: 2