Python – Converting string into datetime

datetimepython

I've got a huge list of date-times like this as strings:

Jun 1 2005  1:33PM
Aug 28 1999 12:00AM

I'm going to be shoving these back into proper datetime fields in a database so I need to magic them into real datetime objects.

This is going through Django's ORM so I can't use SQL to do the conversion on insert.

Best Answer

datetime.strptime is the main routine for parsing strings into datetimes. It can handle all sorts of formats, with the format determined by a format string you give it:

from datetime import datetime

datetime_object = datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005  1:33PM', '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')

The resulting datetime object is timezone-naive.

Links:

Python documentation for strptime: Python 2, Python 3
Python documentation for strptime/strftime format strings: Python 2, Python 3
strftime.org is also a really nice reference for strftime

Notes:

strptime = "string parse time"
strftime = "string format time"
Pronounce it out loud today & you won't have to search for it again in 6 months.

Related Solutions

C# – How to calculate someone’s age based on a DateTime type birthday

An easy to understand and simple solution.

// Save today's date.
var today = DateTime.Today;

// Calculate the age.
var age = today.Year - birthdate.Year;

// Go back to the year in which the person was born in case of a leap year
if (birthdate.Date > today.AddYears(-age)) age--;

However, this assumes you are looking for the western idea of the age and not using East Asian reckoning.

Sql – How to return only the Date from a SQL Server DateTime datatype

SELECT DATEADD(dd, 0, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, @your_date))

for example

SELECT DATEADD(dd, 0, DATEDIFF(dd, 0, GETDATE()))

gives me

2008-09-22 00:00:00.000

Pros:

No varchar<->datetime conversions required
No need to think about locale

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to calculate someone’s age based on a DateTime type birthday

Sql – How to return only the Date from a SQL Server DateTime datatype

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