Rails translate current date in another format

Question

In Rails I'm trying to localize the date:

2.1.1 :005 > Date.today
 => Mon, 14 Apr 2014 
2.1.1 :006 > I18n.localize(Date.today)
 => "14/04/2014" 
2.1.1 :007 > 

The second output is not the correct translation of the first!

Can you help me ?

Answer 1

You can define a new format:

en:
  date: # there is also a section for datetime and time
    formats:
      day_month_abbr: "%a, %d %b %Y"

and use it like this:

I18n.localize(Date.today, format: :day_month_abbr)
# => "Mon, 14 Apr 2014"

---

Or you can overwrite the default format:

en:
  date:
    formats:
      default: "%a, %d %b %Y"

And then you don't need to give any argument:

I18n.l(Date.today) #=> "Mon, 14 Apr 2014"

---

List of all the wildcards usable for DateTime/Time/Date here: http://apidock.com/ruby/DateTime/strftime

Answer 2

The second upload is in fact the correct translation.

If you want to customize the output formatting, check out the documentation here: http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html#adding-date-time-formats