Trying to get the next month when clicking the link_to. I've done the following in the view.

<%= form_tag rota_days_path, :method => 'get' do %>
    <p>
      <%= hidden_field_tag(:next_month, @t1) %>
      <%= link_to 'Next Month', rota_days_path(:next_month => @next_month)%>
    </p>
<% end %>



  class RotaDaysController < ApplicationController
      # GET /rota_days
      # GET /rota_days.json
      # load_and_authorize_resource
      respond_to :json, :html
      def index
        @rota_days = RotaDay.all
        @hospitals = Hospital.all
        @t1 = Date.today.at_beginning_of_month
        @t2 = Date.today.end_of_month
        @dates = (@t1..@t2)  #Concat variable t1 + t2 together
        # @next_month = Date.today + 1.month(params[: ??? ] #Old

        if params[:next_month]
         # @next_month = Date.today >> 1
          @next_month = params[:next_month] + 1.month
          @t1 = @next_month.at_beginning_of_month
          @t2 = @next_month.end_of_month
          @dates = (@t1..@t2)
        end

        @title = "Rota"

        respond_to do |format|
          format.html # index.html.erb
          format.json { render json: @rota_days }
        end
      end

I have identified that the reason why this may not be working is in because of the following in my controller @next_month = params[:next_month] + 1.month the last two called methods is defined only on time/date objects. but not on fixnum/string objects. I understand I am missing something from this

Update

I have found that the actual issue is that the `params[:next_month] is a string and I am trying to add a date to to it. Which means I need to convert the string to a date/time object.

Console output:

Started GET "/rota_days" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-12-14 22:14:36 +0000
Processing by RotaDaysController#index as HTML
  User Load (0.0ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`id` = 1 LIMIT 1
  RotaDay Load (0.0ms)  SELECT `rota_days`.* FROM `rota_days` 
  Hospital Load (1.0ms)  SELECT `hospitals`.* FROM `hospitals` 
  Rendered rota_days/index.html.erb within layouts/application (23.0ms)
  Role Load (0.0ms)  SELECT `roles`.* FROM `roles` INNER JOIN `roles_users` ON `roles`.`id` = `roles_users`.`role_id` WHERE `roles_users`.`user_id` = 1 AND `roles`.`name` = 'Administrator' LIMIT 1
Completed 200 OK in 42ms (Views: 39.0ms | ActiveRecord: 1.0ms)