More on Saving Dates to Oracle

I did some digging into rails after my last post (but before I saw the comment from Raimonds, so I still need to check that out -- thanks Raimonds!), and found that the setter method generated by rails is doing the timezone adjustment, turning the Date into a TimeWithZone (see the define_write_method_for_time_zone_conversion method in active_record/attribute_methods.rb).

However, in the process of determining which setter method to use, it looks at the skip_time_zone_conversion_for_attributes list, which controls whether to do the timezone conversion or just generate the standard setter method for the attribute. You can just add a line to your active record class, like this:

skip_time_zone_conversion_for_attributes << :my_date_attribute_name

With that line added, the date remains a date, and everything in the persistence layer is happy.

As I mentioned, I haven't tried it yet, but the new oracle enhanced adapter looks like the way to go. I thought I'd post this anyway, in case it's of use to anyone else -- there doesn't seem to be much written about "skip time zone conversion", and it might be useful in other situations...