CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails-3datetimedateinternationalization
Tom Harrison
Tom Harrison

Reputation: 14038

Rails i18n.default_locale and date format ... doesn't seem to be acting like a default

I want Rails (3.2) to use the American date format 03/14/2012 unless I say otherwise.

I have the I18n gem installed, downloaded (and modified) the config/locales/en-US.yml file to have the default format as default: ! '%m/%d/%Y', set my application.rb default locale as config.i18n.default_locale = "en-US", and restarted.

When dates are displayed (e.g. a simple view) they still have the format 2012-03-14. If I use the I18n.l method, the date displays as desired, 03/14/2012. So localization is working through the I18n class.

I guess I was expecting the meaning of "default" to be, "this is the one to use if you're not otherwise told to localize or translate." Apparently I expected wrong :-)

So further digging revealed I could change the defaults for date and time in an initializer, such as config/initializers/date_formats.rb, e.g.

Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default]="%m/%d/%Y"
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:default]="%m/%d/%Y %H:%M"

This appears to do what I want. Several alarming posts suggests that this will screw up how dates are stored in the database, but my tests (using PostgreSQL) suggest that this is not a problem.

So (rant) why the heck shouldn't all apps observe the default locale without wrapping every date on the face of the earth with l and t helpers?

And (actual question) will I cause permanent harm to myself or others by changing the default date and time formats for my application in an initializer?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1742

Answers (1)

Ivan Linko
Ivan Linko

Reputation: 976

I had the same problem and this gem helped me https://github.com/jeremyevans/ruby-american_date

Just add it to your Gemfile, no settings needed

Upvotes: 2

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