I need to update a field (called updated_at). The field in MySQL is of type datetime, and the class is ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone. But the dates are strings like "10/17/2008". I used "10/17/2008".to_date (And I intend .to_time and .to_datetime), and even if in console the ActiveRecord class save successfully, the field in the database still is the current date.
2 Answers
OK.. let's take them one at the time.
First, it is not recommended to set a field name updated_at, since this is a "magic" field that is automatically populated by Rails.
If you want to disable this functionality, you may:
class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
self.record_timestamps = false
end
in your class, but this will also disable created_at fields.
The best option is to add a new field (e.g. my_updated_at) as date in the database, and then Rails will automatically handle conversions, meaning that the next snippet will work:
Foo.new({:my_updated_at => "10/17/2008"})
Second, the answer on how to parse a string to ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone is:
ActiveSupport::TimeZone['UTC'].parse("10/17/2008")
but I don't think this will help you (of course, change UTC with your current date/time).
Simply
date_as_string = "2008-10-17"
ActiveSupport::TimeZone['UTC'].parse(date_as_string)
# => Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 UTC +00:00
And just to confirm that it worked..
ActiveSupport::TimeZone['UTC'].parse(date_as_string).class
# => ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone
