How to add a date attribute in rails models
You can either have date or datetime according to the documentation. Therefore:
rails g model Item name:string desc:string date:datetime
or
rails g model Item name:string desc:string date:date
But the best practice is to use DateTime as a general purpose representation of time.
Although I would probably call it something more descriptive than date. (And just fyi created_at and updated_at columns are already created for you.)
The type is pretty much format agnostic. You can format it with strftime:
%Y%m%d => 20071119 Calendar date (basic)
%F => 2007-11-19 Calendar date (extended)
%Y-%m => 2007-11 Calendar date, reduced accuracy, specific month
%Y => 2007 Calendar date, reduced accuracy, specific year
%C => 20 Calendar date, reduced accuracy, specific century
%Y%j => 2007323 Ordinal date (basic)
%Y-%j => 2007-323 Ordinal date (extended)
%GW%V%u => 2007W471 Week date (basic)
%G-W%V-%u => 2007-W47-1 Week date (extended)
%GW%V => 2007W47 Week date, reduced accuracy, specific week (basic)
%G-W%V => 2007-W47 Week date, reduced accuracy, specific week (extended)
%H%M%S => 083748 Local time (basic)
%T => 08:37:48 Local time (extended)
%H%M => 0837 Local time, reduced accuracy, specific minute (basic)
%H:%M => 08:37 Local time, reduced accuracy, specific minute (extended)
%H => 08 Local time, reduced accuracy, specific hour
%H%M%S,%L => 083748,000 Local time with decimal fraction, comma as decimal sign (basic)
%T,%L => 08:37:48,000 Local time with decimal fraction, comma as decimal sign (extended)
%H%M%S.%L => 083748.000 Local time with decimal fraction, full stop as decimal sign (basic)
%T.%L => 08:37:48.000 Local time with decimal fraction, full stop as decimal sign (extended)
%H%M%S%z => 083748-0600 Local time and the difference from UTC (basic)
%T%:z => 08:37:48-06:00 Local time and the difference from UTC (extended)
%Y%m%dT%H%M%S%z => 20071119T083748-0600 Date and time of day for calendar date (basic)
%FT%T%:z => 2007-11-19T08:37:48-06:00 Date and time of day for calendar date (extended)
%Y%jT%H%M%S%z => 2007323T083748-0600 Date and time of day for ordinal date (basic)
%Y-%jT%T%:z => 2007-323T08:37:48-06:00 Date and time of day for ordinal date (extended)
%GW%V%uT%H%M%S%z => 2007W471T083748-0600 Date and time of day for week date (basic)
%G-W%V-%uT%T%:z => 2007-W47-1T08:37:48-06:00 Date and time of day for week date (extended)
%Y%m%dT%H%M => 20071119T0837 Calendar date and local time (basic)
%FT%R => 2007-11-19T08:37 Calendar date and local time (extended)
%Y%jT%H%MZ => 2007323T0837Z Ordinal date and UTC of day (basic)
%Y-%jT%RZ => 2007-323T08:37Z Ordinal date and UTC of day (extended)
%GW%V%uT%H%M%z => 2007W471T0837-0600 Week date and local time and difference from UTC (basic)
%G-W%V-%uT%R%:z => 2007-W47-1T08:37-06:00 Week date and local time and difference from UTC (extended)
Thanks to @BWStearns for that quote
Finally as far as input field goes: Have a look at these Form helpers.
<%= date_field(:user, :born_on) %>
<%= datetime_field(:user, :meeting_time) %>
<%= datetime_local_field(:user, :graduation_day) %>
1. What data type to add for date:???
In your migrations, you can use the following types for columns:
:string, :text, :integer, :float, :decimal, :datetime, :timestamp, :time, :date, :binary, :boolean
(extracted from the add_column transformation here)
In your case, if you don't need to store the time, you can use date:name_of_your_field.
2. What format will the date attribute be in? (mm/dd/yy)?
The attribute will be stored as a ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone, and you will have to format it when displaying it. You can use Time#strftime to do so.
your_attribute.strftime("%m/%d/%Y") #=> "11/19/2007"
3. And what kind of form input should it have?
Yes, you can perfectly use:
f.date_field :date?
It will return a text_field of type “date”. Depending on the browser support, a date picker will show up in the input field.
I hope that helps! Happy coding!