Time Accessor is a Rails plugin that adds a time_accessor method to ActiveRecord::Base. The method helps to setup attribute accessors that behave like Time objects and can be set using multiparameters.

Add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'time_accessor'

Use the time_accessor method in your model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  time_accessor :time
end

Then set your ‘time’ attribute with multiparameters:

user = User.new({"time(1i)" => 2012, "time(2i)" => 01, "time(3i)" => 21})
user.time # => 2012-01-21 00:00:00 UTC

This project rocks and uses MIT-LICENSE.