datetime - Separate date and time form fields in Rails

Question

I have an ActiveRecord model Eventwith a datetime column starts_at. I would like to present a form, where date and time for starts_at are chosen separately (e.g. "23-10-2010" for date and "18:00" for time). These fields should be backed by the single column starts_at, and validations should preferably be against starts_at, too.

I can of course muck around with virtual attributes and hooks, but I would like a more elegant solution. I have experimented with both composed_of (rdoc), and attribute-decorator (lighthouse discussion, github) without success.

Below is a rough outline of what I would like..

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates_presence_of :start_date
end

# View
# On submission this should set start_date.
form_for @event do |f|
  f.text_field :starts_at_date         # date-part of start_date
  f.text_field :starts_at_time_of_day  # time-of-day-part of start_date
  f.submit
end

Any help appreciated.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3677531/separate-date-and-time-form-fields-in-rails

Answer 1

Was looking at this today for a Rails project, and came across this gem:

https://github.com/shekibobo/time_splitter

Setting DateTimes can be a difficult or ugly thing, especially through a web form. Finding a good DatePicker or TimePicker is easy, but getting them to work on both can be difficult. TimeSplitter automatically generates accessors for date, time, hour, and min on your datetime or time attributes, making it trivial to use different form inputs to set different parts of a datetime field.

Looks like it would do the job for you