Some handly Rails snippets

To get url along with query string

$url = (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS'])) ? "https://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] : "http://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

To extract 'year' or 'month' or 'day' from a unix timestamp

strtotime to convert date to unix timestamp as date() accept unix timestamp not just any simple string.
date('Y',strtotime('2011-12-2') );

To get Month name:
      Date::MONTHNAMES[Date.today.month]
or

I18n.t("date.month_names") # [nil, "January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"]
I18n.t("date.abbr_month_names") # [nil, "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]
I18n.t("date.month_names")[Date.today.month] # "December"
I18n.t("date.abbr_month_names")[Date.today.month] # "Dec"