Displaying a Textarea field

Use the following in your views to add a text area control.

text_area 'portal', 'portal_description' , :rows=>4, :cols=>40 

Displaying a DATE TIME field

If your column is defined to be DATETIME, then you can use the datetime_select method to display the date/time control.

datetime_select 'subscription', 'created_at' 

The default date and time values for this control can be specified. See setting the default time for datetime_select.

For more information see datetime_select manual page.