CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondatetime
diamond
diamond

Reputation: 69

Converting a String into a datetime object in python

I have a string field like this.. 

2011-09-04 23:44:30.801000

and now I need to convert it to a datetime object in python so that I can calculate the difference between two datetime objects.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 6592

Answers (4)

Viral Shah
Viral Shah

Reputation: 2246

# date string to datetime object
date_str = "2008-11-10 17:53:59"
dt_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
print repr(dt_obj)

Upvotes: 0

wRAR
wRAR

Reputation: 25559

Use datetime.datetime.strptime.

Upvotes: 0

Mark Gemmill
Mark Gemmill

Reputation: 5949

An alternative to datetime.datetime.strptime would be the python-dateutil libray. dateutil will allow you to do the same thing without the explicit formatting step:

>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> date_obj = parser.parse('2011-09-04 23:44:30.801000')
>>> date
datetime.datetime(2011, 9, 4, 23, 44, 30, 801000)

It's not a standard library module, but it is very handy for parsing date and time strings, especially if you don't have control over the format they come in.

One caveat if you install this library: version 1.5 is for Python 2 and version 2.0 is for Python 3. easy_install and pip default to installing the 2.0 version, so you have to explicitly indicate python-dateutil==1.5 if you are using Python 2.

Upvotes: 4

Adam Matan
Adam Matan

Reputation: 136441

You should use datetime.datetime.strptime(), which converts a string and date format into a datetime.datetime object.

The format fields (e.g., %Y denotes four-digit year) are specified in the Python documentation.

>>> import datetime
>>> s      = '2011-09-04 23:44:30.801000'
>>> format = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f'
>>> date=datetime.datetime.strptime(s, format)
>>> date
datetime.datetime(2011, 9, 4, 23, 44, 30, 801000)

Upvotes: 7

Related Questions