Today we're going to learn how to convert a variable from string to datetime. Let's supose we some date like:
Sep 13 2012 11:00PM
If we need to convert this string into a datetime variable for example to store this date into our database in a Django DateField. We have many different ways to do so, here we'll see the most easy and common ways:
Option 1 - Using datetime library
from datetime import datetime
date_string = 'Sep 13 2012 11:00PM'
date_object = datetime.strptime(date_string, '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')- %b: Month in short format
- %d: Day in 2 digit format
- %Y: Year in 4 digit format
- %I: Hour in short format (0-12)
- %M: Minutes in 2 digit format (0-60)
- %p: AM or PM
To see other formats like day of week, long hour format(0-24), 2 digit year... we can go to the official Python docs with all the possible formats Python: datetime library and formats
Option 2: Using external library dateutil - parser
from dateutil import parser
date_string = 'Sep 13 2012 11:00PM'
date_object = parser.parse(date_string)To install this library we just need to do: pip install dateutil
To read more information about dateutil and parser we should go to Python dateutil
Option 3: Using external library timestring
import timestring
date_string = 'Sep 13 2012 11:00PM'
date_object = timestring.Date(date_string)To install this library we have to type: pip install timestring
This library doesn't return a datetime object, it returns a Timestring object, but it's easy to convert between them.
To see more information about Timestring library we should go Github: TimeString
Any doubt don't hesitate commenting !