text: Q:
  
  How to get a Date from date_select or select_date in Rails?
  
  Using select_date gives me back a params[:my_date] with year, month and day attributes. How do get a Date object easily? I'm hoping for something like params[:my_date].to_date.
  I'm happy to use date_select instead as well.
  
  A:
  
  Using date_select gives you 3 separate key/value pairs for the day, month, and year respectively. So you can pass them into Date.new as parameters to create a new Date object.
  An example date_select returned params for an Event model:
  "event"=>
   {"name"=>"Birthday",
    "date(1i)"=>"2012",
    "date(2i)"=>"11",
    "date(3i)"=>"28"},
  
  Then to create the new Date object:
  event = params[:event]
  date = Date.new event["date(1i)"].to_i, event["date(2i)"].to_i, event["date(3i)"].to_i
  
  You may instead decide to wrap this logic in a method:
  def flatten_date_array hash
    %w(1 2 3).map { |e| hash["date(#{e}i)"].to_i }
  end
  
  And then call it as date = Date.new *flatten_date_array params[:event].  But this is not logic that truly belongs in a controller, so you may decide to move it elsewhere. You could even extend this onto the Date class, and call it as date = Date.new_from_hash params[:event].
  
  A:
  
  Here is another one:
  # view
  <%= date_select('event', 'date') %>
  
  # controller
  date = Date.civil(*params[:event].sort.map(&:last).map(&:to_i))
  
  Found at http://kevinlochner.com/use-rails-dateselect-without-an-activerecord
  
  A:
  
  Here is the another one 
  Date.civil(params[:event]["date(1i)"].to_i,params[:event]["date(2i)"].to_i,params[:event]["date(3i)"].to_i)
  
  