I spent a good amount of time breaking my head over why a date field wasn't getting set in one of the model after retrieving it's value from a form. It turns out that if you pass a random string and not an actual date, rails will silently assign a nil to that field without complaining. For example, I have a class Fact with date fields called from and to. Notice what is happening.

Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.3)

>> fact = Fact.new

=> #<Fact id: nil, from: nil, to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>

>> fact.from = "foo"

=> "foo"

>> fact

=> #<Fact id: nil, from: nil, to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>

>> fact.from = DateTime.now

=> Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:53:29 -0600

>> fact

=> #<Fact id: nil, from: "2009-09-13 09:53:29", to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>

script/console Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.3) >> fact = Fact.new => #<Fact id: nil, from: nil, to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> >> fact.from = "foo" => "foo" >> fact => #<Fact id: nil, from: nil, to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> >> fact.from = DateTime.now => Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:53:29 -0600 >> fact => #<Fact id: nil, from: "2009-09-13 09:53:29", to: nil, timeToCount: nil, val: nil, remarks: nil, cp_detail_id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> When I assign a value foo, it doesn't complain but just assigns a nil.  Only if it had complained, I could have saved so much of my brain cells and time. Sigh ... Now, you might ask why am I assigning a foo instead of date. Well, I am still developing and was just putting random values to get the form to work  :P Anyway, I hope it will help some nOOb like me someday. Have a good week, Mahesh Murthy