CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyruby-on-rails-3unix-timestamp
user1816847
user1816847

Reputation: 2077

How do I do auto conversion of Rails time to Unix epoch time?

I have a Rails app that makes heavy use of the created_at and updated_at fields.

I've found that something like Post.last.created_at.to_f will give me epoch time but I always need epoch time so I was wondering if there is some way to write an automated post-query filter that will do the conversion every time I called created_at and update_at. Right now, every time I read created_at/updated_at I repeat myself, which is bad form, and has already caused bugs when I forget to do the conversion.

I'm using Rails 3.2.13 and Ruby 1.9.3p392.

Also, I can't just write post.created_at.to_f in my view since I'm using render JSON for my output.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2046

Answers (2)

Deepak Kumar
Deepak Kumar

Reputation: 972

Personally I believe approach suggested by @tadman is a better one.

created_at method can be as follows to do what you want:

      def created_at
        created_at= attributes["created_at"]
        created_at ? created_at.to_f : nil
      end

Place it in the models or attach it to ActiveRecord::Base. Carefully test it before putting to production.

Upvotes: 2

tadman
tadman

Reputation: 211590

Why don't you just make a method you can patch in to ActiveRecord::Base?

def created_epoch
  self.created_at.to_f
end

Then you won't have to remember to convert, you can just use that method instead.

Upvotes: 3

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