date_select in form fails with "<field> is invalid"

Question

I have this template,

<div class="form-group">
  <label>Insurance Expiry : </label>
  <%= date_select f, :insurance_expiry, class: "form-control" %>
</div>

and migration has,

def change do
  create table(:buses) do

   # snipped

    add :insurance_expiry, :date, default: Ecto.Date.local

  end

and in db model,

 schema "buses" do

 # snipped

   field :insurance_expiry, :date

 end

Debug Info on create action,

[info] Processing by BusMan.BusController.create/2
  Parameters: %{"_csrf_token" => "PDkIZycHTRJsEzwOEBJRXxo6MVIFJgAAHla/FI4Y5PQxTYdk/XakNg==", "_utf8" => "✓", "bus" => %{"bus_no" => "138", "chassis_no" => "nTHSNTH", "engine_no" => "RCHR989", "insurance_expiry" => %{"day" => "1", "month" => "10", "year" => "2019"}, "models" => "NTHRCG898", "reg_no" => "TN21W0613", "year_of_registration" => "1990"}, "format" => "html"}

form submission fails with :

Oops, something went wrong! Please check the errors below:

    Insurance expiry is invalid

I just want to input a date, Is date_select is what I need or am I missing something else?

Answer 1

as José Valim corrected, using Ecto.Date rather than :date correctly solves the issue, and doesn't require explicit casting.

---

It looks like the date being passed to the create function is a map. Prior to inserting it, try casting it to date with

Ecto.Date.cast(%{"day" => "1", "month" => "10", "year" => "2019"})

I could imagine code that looked something like

selected_date = %{"day" => "1", "month" => "10", "year" => "2019"}
  |> Ecto.Date.cast
  |> Repo.insert!