date_select
The date select helper gives you an easy way to include a date selector within your application. The user selects the date from three dropdown boxes and therefore has little opportunity to make mistakes.
The date selector is created by this statement
<%= date_select( "member", "birthday", :start_year => 1900 ) %>
In this example Member is a model, birthday is a attribute in the model. The selector will start in the year 1900.
The example would render to this html-code in the view :
<select name="member[birthday(1i)]">
<option>1900</option>
<option>1901</option>
[SNIP]
<option>1974</option>
<option>1975</option>
<option selected="selected">1976</option>
<option>1977</option>
<option>1978</option>
<option>1979</option>
<option>1980</option>
<option>1981</option>
</select>
<select name="member[birthday(2i)]">
<option value="1">January</option>
<option value="2">February</option>
<option value="3" selected="selected">March</option>
<option value="4">April</option>
<option value="5">May</option>
<option value="6">June</option>
<option value="7">July</option>
<option value="8">August</option>
<option value="9">September</option>
<option value="10">October</option>
<option value="11">November</option>
<option value="12">December</option>
</select>
<select name="member[birthday(3i)]">
<option>1</option>
<option>2</option>
<option>3</option>
[SNIP]
<option>21</option>
<option selected="selected">22</option>
<option>23</option>
[SNIP]
<option>31</option>
</select>
As you can see there are the three dropdown boxes, each with a special name, so that rails can use them for a multi-value assignment.
Rails makes it simple to save the changed values.
This is an example code, taken from the member controller :
def update
@member = Member.find( @params['member']['id'])
if @member.update_attributes( @params['member'] )
redirect_to( :action => "list")
else
render_action "edit"
end
end
More on datehelpers is found in the reference documentation
Note on usability
I’m rather wary of this feature. If you use the database a lot, you’d want a simple text-field for date-entry and not click for every date on three select-boxes each. —vs
Defaults
It seems like it’s not possible to set a default for month, day selects. On the other hand, a default can be set for the year using :default_start_year or :start_year. —Tamer Salama?
Answer: Initialize your model with the date you want. More here .
:discard_year doesn’t work!
I have created a small plugin to adjust the behaviour to fix this issue here: http://www.markpaxton.net/RoR/datetime-fix.zip
The selectors also ignore standard rules for the number of days in the month. Each month gives 31 days as valid select options. Ugh!
Bug
date_select is faulty for Rails 1.2.0 and above. The day field for the object so_header expands incorrectly to:
<select name="discard_hourtruediscard_typetrueorderyearmonthdayhourminutesecondprefixso_header[date(3i)]use_hidden[day]"> <option value="1" selected="selected">1</option> <option value="2">2</option> <option value="3">3</option> ...
See Also
category: Howto