Time.now.to_s(:magic)

Many Rails developers default to strftime for converting their dates to appropriate strings.

However, Rails has the often overlooked time conversion extensions which are must faster on the draw:

 > t = Time.now
 => Sat Dec 10 11:14:04 -0500 2011 

 > t.to_s(:db)
 => "2011-12-10 11:14:04" 
 
 > t.to_s(:time)
 => "11:14" 

 > t.to_s(:short)
 => "10 Dec 11:14" 
 
 > t.to_s(:number)
 => "20111210111404" 

To see a complete listing of the formats look no further than Time::DATE_FORMATS.