Print date from yaml to ruby using middleman

I am making a comic book collection app using Middleman.

I am able to get different information from a YAML file and render it in a .erb file.

Now, I created a date using yaml like this:

date: 1977-08-01

I tried looking around the web on how to render it in different format, but I can't find ANYTHING...

Per example, I have a title field, in my yaml document, that goes like this:

title: "Uncanny X-Men"

So I render it in my erb document using this:

<%= comic["title"] %>

But how do I get, let's say, to print the month from my date? Impossible to find any kind of information... I do get how to use different aspects of dates in either ruby or yaml, but not how to render a date FROM yaml to ruby :(

Thanks!

Solution

You need to parse your date value in the YAML file into a Ruby date class, first make sure to surround your date values in the YAML file with quotes like so:

date: '1977-08-01'

and then to parse:

<%= Date.parse(comic["date"]) %>

and to get the month you would add .month like so:

<%= Date.parse(comic["date"]).month %>

that will give you the number 8 if you want more customization to the way your month look like you should look into strftime, if so you wouldn't even need to use .month.

Ideally to DRY things up, you would create a helper in the config.rb

# Methods defined in the helpers block are available in templates
helpers do
  def format_date(date_txt)
    date = Date.parse(date_txt)
    date.strftime("%B")
  end
end

And later you can call it inside your template like so:

<%= format_date(comic["date"]) %>

I hope that helps.