CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondatetime
Arjun
Arjun

Reputation: 907

Convert String with month name to datetime

I'm using pickadate.js which returns the date in this format: 

8 March, 2017

I would like to convert this to the datetime format of: 

yyyy-mm-dd

What would be the best way to do this in Python?

Upvotes: 30

Views: 79750

Answers (2)

Bill Bell
Bill Bell

Reputation: 21643

Mark Reed's advice might be best in your case. One frequently overlooked alternative for dates is the arrow module, which offers some interesting features. In this case you can do:

>>> import arrow
>>> arrow.get('8 March, 2017', 'D MMMM, YYYY').format('YYYY-MM-DD')
'2017-03-08'

As an example of a feature, if you capture that date you could format it in Russian.

>>> aDate = arrow.get('8 March, 2017', 'D MMMM, YYYY')
>>> aDate.format('YYYY MMMM DD', locale='ru')
'2017 марта 08'

Upvotes: 12

john_science
john_science

Reputation: 6541

In Python, this is an easy exercise in using the datetime format strings:

from datetime import datetime

s = "8 March, 2017"
d = datetime.strptime(s, '%d %B, %Y')
print(d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d'))

See this table for a full description of all the format qualifiers.

Here I use the datetime.strptime method to convert your datepicker.js string to a Python datetime object. And I use the .strftime method to print that object out as a string using the format you desire. At first those format strings are going to be hard to remember, but you can always look them up. And they well organized, in the end.

I do wonder, though: might it be better to stay in JavaScript than switch over to Python for this last step? Of course, if you are using Python elsewhere in your process, this is an easy solution.

Upvotes: 67

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