Custom Formats Are Not Working

[scarrick68]

I am trying to set a default DateTime format for my app, so I did this in a JS file and included it into my application.js

import LocalTime from "local-time"

LocalTime.config.i18n["en"]["date"]["formats"]["default"] = "%b %e, %Y"
LocalTime.config.i18n["en"]["datetime"]["formats"]["default"] = "%b %e, %Y"
LocalTime.config.i18n["en"]["time"]["formats"]["default"] = "%b %e, %Y"

LocalTime.start()

I printed in the console and see the updated default format, but all of my DateTimes still show in the original default format. I am only interested in DateTime. I set the default on all of them just in case I was passing an unexpected type.

I called local_time in the view like this with :my_format being added to the formats instead of overriding default:

<%= local_time(@my_date_time) %>

<%= local_time(@my_date_time, format: :my_format) %>
<%= local_time(@my_date_time, :my_format) %>

[Annedj]

HI @scarrick68, if that helps, we did it by passing the format like this:

local_time(@date_time, :time_with_tz)

and specifying the format in our config/locales/en.yml file as such:

en:
  time:
    formats:
      time_with_tz: "%H:%Mh %Z"

[josefarias]

Ah I see what happened. Sorry this is confusing, but rails helpers (like #local_time) will call a different default format than the one specified in LocalTime.config.i18n.

See line 55 here:

local_time/app/helpers/local_time_helper.rb

Lines 45 to 57 in 7b60d1d

	def find_time_format(format)
	if format.is_a?(Symbol)
	if (i18n_format = I18n.t("time.formats.#{format}", default: [:"date.formats.#{format}", ''])).present?
	i18n_format
	elsif (date_format = Time::DATE_FORMATS[format] || Date::DATE_FORMATS[format])
	date_format.is_a?(Proc) ? LocalTime.default_time_format : date_format
	else
	LocalTime.default_time_format
	end
	else
	format.presence || LocalTime.default_time_format
	end
	end

Changing this is not trivial. Perhaps the action item here is adding a note to the readme saying that default values shouldn't be changed as it won't behave as one might expect. I'll look into it.

[josefarias]

Actually, I'm going to reopen so we remember to document this somehow

[josefarias]

Done in 6294194

For the time being, I'd only recommend using the i18n configuration after understanding which helpers use our RelativeTime module behind the scenes. Not specifying a format will not result in grabbing the i18n config's default format — that's different to the mattr accessors defined on the Ruby side here:

local_time/lib/local_time.rb

Lines 2 to 3 in 7013aa9

	mattr_accessor(:default_time_format) { "%B %e, %Y %l:%M%P" }
	mattr_accessor(:default_date_format) { "%B %e, %Y" }

"default" is admittedly a confusing choice of name here. Might revisit later.