Rails undefined method `[]' for 2011-03-16 18:58:00 UTC:Time

Total newbie with ruby and rails...and perhaps I'm making more work for myself...but unable to change the timezone to local I decided to parse the date and time and use it for my own purposes. Except the substring is not working out for me.

<% ds = thejob.datestamp 
       dsyy = ds[0,4]
       dsmm = ds[5,2]   
     开发者_如何学运维  dsdd = ds[8,2]   
       dshrs = ds[11,2]   
       dsmin = ds[14,2]   
       dssec = ds[17,2]   
       dstz = ds[20,2] %>

Results in error:

undefined method `[]' for 2011-03-16 18:58:00 UTC:Time

Are you sure datestamp is actually a string, rather than a Time type value?

Judging by the Ruby date/time documentation, you may just need:

local = thejob.datestamp.getlocal

ds = thejob.datestamp 
dsyy = ds.year
dsmm = ds.month   
dsdd = ds.day  
dshrs = ds.hour
dsmin = ds.min
dssec = ds.sec  
dstz = I don't remember