Python provides the strptime[]
method, in its
datetime
class, to convert a string representation of the date/time into a date object.
Syntax
The syntax for the strptime[]
method is:
Code
The code snippet below illustrates the usage of the strptime[]
method in Python:
from datetime import datetime date_time_str = '18/09/19 01:55:19' date_time_obj = datetime.strptime[date_time_str, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S'] print ["The type of the date is now", type[date_time_obj]] print ["The date is", date_time_obj]
The strptime[]
method will not work if the string argument is not
consistent with the format parameter. This is shown below:
from datetime import datetime date_time_str = '180919 015519' date_time_obj = datetime.strptime[date_time_str, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S'] print ["The type of the date is now", type[date_time_obj]] print ["The date is", date_time_obj]
The strptime[] method is available under datetime and time modules to parse the string to datetime and time objects.
To convert string to datetime in Python, use the strptime[] method. The strptime[] is a built-in function of the Python datetime class used to convert a string representation of the date/time to a date object.
Syntax
datetime.strptime[date_string, format]
Parameters
The strptime[] function takes both the arguments that are mandatory and should be a string. The strptime[] function is exactly the opposite of the strftime[] function, which converts a datetime object to a string.
Example
# app.py from datetime import datetime dt_str = '27/10/20 05:23:20' dt_obj = datetime.strptime[dt_str, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S'] print["The type of the date is now", type[dt_obj]] print["The date is", dt_obj]
Output
The type of the date is now The date is 2020-10-27 05:23:20
The datetime.strptime[] is a general method for parsing strings into datetimes. It can handle all sorts of formats, with the format defined by the format string you give.
Convert Python String to datetime using dateutil
The dateutil can be installed from PyPI using the pip package manager.
To convert String to datetime, import the dateutil package and use the parser module.
# app.py from dateutil import parser dt_str = '27/10/20 05:23:20' dt_obj = parser.parse[dt_str] print["The type of the date is now", type[dt_obj]] print["The date is", dt_obj]
Output
The type of the date is now The date is 2020-10-27 05:23:20
Python String to date object
To convert string to date object in Python, use the date[] function along with the strptime[] function.
# app.py from datetime import datetime date_str = '10-27-2020' dto = datetime.strptime[date_str, '%m-%d-%Y'].date[] print[type[dto]] print[dto]
Output
2020-10-27
The strptime[] function will not work if the string argument is not consistent with the format parameter.
Convert String to Datetime with locale
To set a locale in Python, import the locale package in your Python progrThen, The locale.setlocale[] method is used to set the locale.
# app.py import locale from datetime import datetime locale.setlocale[locale.LC_ALL, 'es_ES'] date_str_es = '27-Octubre-2020' # es_ES locale datetime_object = datetime.strptime[date_str_es, '%d-%B-%Y'] print[datetime_object]
Output
2020-10-27 00:00:00
That is it for converting a string to datetime in a Python article.
See also
Python Date Format
Python date_range[]
Python to_datetime[]
Python convert datetime to String