How to show current year in view?

Question

Is there a function I can use to show the current year in a view? I have tried

<%= Time.now  %>

to try and show the time but this does not work for me.

Answer 1

<%= Time.current.year %>

http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_ruby/datesandtimes.html

Answer 2

I'd rather use Date class to get year than Time class (if you only need the Date, you don't need to consider hours, minutes and seconds).

<%= Date.today.year %>

c.f. http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.1.0/libdoc/date/rdoc/Date.html#method-c-today

Answer 3

I think the best way to get the current year considering application timezone is:

Date.current.year

Answer 4

I like to use:

Time.zone.now.year

This takes into account the current timezone (incase you have overridden it for a particular user).

Answer 5

Despite that it has already been answered, I thought it might come handy for those who want to look at benchmark results for all the suggested solutions.

require 'benchmark'

n = 500000
Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { n.times do ; Date.today.year; end }
  x.report { n.times do ; Date.current.year; end }
  x.report { n.times do ; Time.current.year; end }
  x.report { n.times do ; Time.zone.now.year; end }
end

    user     system      total        real
0.680000   0.030000   0.710000 (  0.709078)
2.730000   0.010000   2.740000 (  2.735085)
3.340000   0.010000   3.350000 (  3.363586)
3.070000   0.000000   3.070000 (  3.082388)

Now, it may perhaps seem over the top for something as simple as that, however, from a simple optimisation perspective for a high throughput application, I will consider using Date.today.year

Said so, if your application is Time Zone sensitive, perhaps Date.current or Time.zone based methods are your best bet.

Check out this wonderful Railscast by Ryan on Time Zones