Parsing dates in Ruby

Question

I'm trying to parse some dates with bad formatting in Ruby. I decided to hinge part of the method on the presence of am or pm, so I've split the string there.

def bad_date(date)
  if date.match(/m\d/i)
    date_time = date.split('m', 2).reverse
    time = date_time.include?('m')
    date = date_time - time
  else
    date
  end
end

It split in the right place and reverse the array it's all good, but it takes the m with it. How can I replace it? Or how can I avoid that entirely?

Essentially I'm trying to convert some dates like this:

dates
=> ["0900am06/13/2015", "0900 am06/13/2015", "0900am 06/13/2015", "0900 am 06/13/2015"]

Into this:

2015-06-13 09:00 AM

With an acceptable margin of error.

This SO answer has a solution for keeping the delimiter upon splitting a string. It can be repurposed to keep the m. Hope it helps! — Zoran
– Zoran, Commented May 28, 2015 at 9:49

Arup Rakshit · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-28 10:03:13Z

3

You can take a help of strptime and strftime methods both :

require 'date'

d = Date.strptime("0900am06/13/2015", "%H%M%p%m/%d/%Y")
# => #<Date: 2015-06-13 ((2457187j,0s,0n),+0s,2299161j)>
d.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %P")
# => "2015-06-13 00:00 am"
d.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %p")
# => "2015-06-13 00:00 AM"

Here is a method:

require 'date'

def bad_date(date)
  DateTime.strptime(date.tr(" ",''), "%H%M%p%m/%d/%Y").strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %p")
end

dates = ["0900am06/13/2015", "0900 am06/13/2015", "0900am 06/13/2015"]
dates.map { |d| bad_date d }
# => ["2015-06-13 09:00 AM", "2015-06-13 09:00 AM", "2015-06-13 09:00 AM"]

edited May 28, 2015 at 10:03

answered May 28, 2015 at 9:49

Arup Rakshit

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1 Comment

Triveni Badgujar Over a year ago

d = Date.strptime("0900am06/13/2015".gsub(/ /,''), "%H%M%p%m/%d/%Y")

Vrushali Pawar · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-28 09:53:05Z

2

2.1.0 :085 > date = "0900am 06/13/2015"
 => "0900am 06/13/2015" 
2.1.0 :086 > date.gsub!(" ","")
 => "0900am06/13/2015" 
2.1.0 :087 > Date.strptime(date, "%H%M%p%m/%d/%Y")
 => Sat, 13 Jun 2015

answered May 28, 2015 at 9:53

Vrushali Pawar

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