Elixir:
Converting a date into a string
How to:
In Elixir, the Date module has a to_string/1 function that converts a date to a string.
date = ~D[2023-03-14]
date_string = Date.to_string(date)
IO.puts(date_string) # "2023-03-14"For more custom formatting, you can use Timex:
{:ok, datetime} = DateTime.new(~D[2023-03-14], {0, 0, 0})
formatted_date = Timex.format!(datetime, "{YYYY}-{0M}-{0D}")
IO.puts(formatted_date) # "2023-03-14"Deep Dive
Before Elixir 1.3, date and time manipulation was more cumbersome and reliant on third-party libraries. With version 1.3 and later, Elixir incorporated the Date, Time, and DateTime modules for better handling of dates and times.
When you need formatting beyond the ISO8601 standard, consider the Timex library, an Elixir package providing a complete date-time handling experience.
Conversion to a string isn’t magic. It’s about representing the complex Date struct into something universally understandable. A struct holds more information than the string representation, so be aware that converting back from a string to a date will lose this extra context unless appropriately encoded.
See Also
- Elixir Date module: https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Date.html
- Timex documentation: https://hexdocs.pm/timex/readme.html
- ISO8601 format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601