[LRUG] How does Rails decide how to parse ambiguous dates?

[John Winters]

On 26/07/11 16:07, John Winters wrote:
[snip]
> def read_attribute_before_type_cast(attr_name)
> @attributes[attr_name]
> end
>
> Unless I've missed it somewhere, no formatting at all occurs.

I'm back to my earlier view that no formatting occurs in the field 
handling code, but there is some sort of conversion happening in 
ActiveRecord and I'm at a loss as to where.

I have a model called an era, and it has a Date field called starts_at. 
  I've fire up the console and get the following (prompt shortened for 
clarity):

 > era.starts_at.class
  => Date
 > era.attributes["starts_at"].class
  => Date
 > era.read_attribute_before_type_cast("starts_at").class
  => String

Now where did that conversion occur?

John