Get current year and month (and next month) in this format YYYYMM in Ruby

Question

How do I get the current date and month in Ruby in a specific format?

If today is June, 8th of 2012, I want to get 201206.

And also, I would like to be able to get the next month from the one we are in, taking into account that in 201212, the next month would be 201301.

Answer 1

I'd do it like this:

require 'date'
Date.today.strftime("%Y%m")
#=> "201206"
(Date.today>>1).strftime("%Y%m")
#=> "201207"

The advantage of Date#>> is that it automatically takes care of certain things for you:

Date.new(2012,12,12)>>1
#=> #<Date: 2013-01-12 ((2456305j,0s,0n),+0s,2299161j)>

Answer 2

Current month:

date = Time.now.strftime("%Y%m")

Next month:

if Time.now.month == 12
  date = Time.now.year.next.to_s + "01"
else
  date = Time.now.strftime("%Y%m").to_i + 1
end