strftime is used to format date and time in Rails views.

The common (bad) approach would be to format a datetime with strftime directly in the views:

post.created_at.strftime("%d %b, %Y")
# => 11 June, 2022

However, this way you store datetime formatting logic in views and there’s a high chance of avoidable duplication.

What if we store strftime in the model?

# app/models/post.rb

def created_at_dmy
  date.strftime("%d %b, %Y") # 11 June, 2022
end

post.created_at_dmy
# => 11 June, 2022

That’s better, but there is a high chance that you will want to use the same strftime for other models in the app, and this method won’t be accessible for them.

So you can just create a helper so that your strftime is available everywhere:

# app/helpers/time_helper.rb

module TimeHelper
  def created_at_dmy(date)
    date.strftime("%d %b, %Y") # 11 June, 2022
  end
end

created_at_dmy(post.created_at)
# => 11 June, 2022

That’s quite good. But there’s an even better way offered by Rails!

The Rails API has inbuilt Date::DATE_FORMATS and Time::DATE_FORMATS classes, that we can use out of the box:

post.created_at.to_fs(:iso8601)
# => "2022-06-04T08:57:37Z"

post.created_at.to_fs(:rfc822)
# => "Sat, 04 Jun 2022 08:57:37 +0000"

post.created_at.to_fs(:short)
# => "04 Jun 08:57"

post.created_at.to_fs(:long)
# => "June 04, 2022 08:57"

This way you can create an initializer to add your own methods:

# config/initializers/date_format.rb

Time::DATE_FORMATS[:dmy] = "%d %b, %Y" # 04 June, 2022
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:my] = "%m/%Y" # 06/2022

post.created_at.to_fs(:dmy)
# => 11 June, 2022

post.created_at.to_fs(:my)
# => 06/2022

Ok, but what’s the difference between Date::DATE_FORMATS and Time::DATE_FORMATS?

Well, the two classes can seem similar but they have a few different methods and can provide different outcomes:

Date::DATE_FORMATS[:date1] = ->(date) { date.strftime("#{date.day.ordinalize} %B, %Y") }
post.created_at.to_fs(:date1)
# => "2022-06-04 08:57:37 UTC"

Time::DATE_FORMATS[:time1] = ->(date) { date.strftime("#{date.day.ordinalize} %B, %Y") }
post.created_at.to_fs(:time1)
# => "11th June, 2022"

Fantastic!

Additionally, as Jerome suggested, another good way to display strftime would be via locales:

That’s it!