I can’t find a strftime() format that will output the hour without the leading zero. For instance 6:20 will be instead 06:20. This just looks a little sloppy. I created a datetime.rb intializer which will contain custom datetime formats for my application.

# RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers/datetime.rb
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:date] = "%a %b %d, %Y"
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:time] = "%I:%M%p"
# ...

Next I set up a helper function which will string together the :date and :time formats and remove the leading zero in the hour with the .gsub method on the string.

  # RAILS_ROOT/app/helpers/application_helper.rb
  def fulltime(created_at)
    created_at.to_s(:date)+" "+created_at.to_s(:time).gsub(/^0/,'').downcase
  end

In a view I’ll just pass the timestamp to the fulltime function

fulltime(@post.created_at)

%e # rather than %d
Time.now.strftime("%e")

If you want to insert a datetime that matches the default mysql datetime type format use this

date('Y-m-d H:i:s');