Create Python Datetime from string

In this article, we are going to see how to create a python DateTime object from a given string.

For this, we will use the datetime.strptime() method. The strptime() method returns a DateTime object corresponding to date_string, parsed according to the format string given by the user.

Syntax: 

datetime.strptime(date_string, format)

Converting string to DateTime using strptime()

Here we are going to convert a simple string into datetime object, for this we will pass the string into strptime() and objectify the datetime object through this.

from datetime import datetime

input_str = '21/01/24 11:04:19'

dt_object = datetime.strptime(
  input_str, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S')

print("The type of the input date string now is: ", 
      type(dt_object))

print("The date is", dt_object)

Output: 

The type of the input date string now is:  <class 'datetime.datetime'>

The date is 2024-01-21 11:04:19

Converting string containing words to datetime using strptime()

The strptime() method allows you to convert timestamps in "words" to date-time objects too. The snippet below shows it can be done:

from datetime import datetime

time_str = 'May 17 2019  11:33PM'
dt_object = datetime.strptime(
  time_str, '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')

print(dt_object)

Output: 

2019-05-17 23:33:00

Python strptime() ValueError

DateTime format for the given string must be known, failing which can cause unnecessary problems and errors. the snippet below shows what problems can be caused:

from datetime import datetime

time_str = '201123101455'

dt_obj = datetime.strptime(time_str, '%y%m%d%H%M%S')
dt_obj2 = datetime.strptime(time_str, '%d%m%y%H%S%M')

print ("1st interpretation of date from string is: ",dt_obj) 
print ("2nd interpretation of date from same string is", dt_obj2)

Output : 

1st interpretation of date from string is:  2020-11-23 10:14:55

2nd interpretation of date from same string is 2023-11-20 10:55:14

The strptime() method will not work if the string argument is not consistent with the format parameter. The following snippets show an error occurring due to the mismatch in the format specifier.

from datetime import datetime

time_str = '220917 114519'
dt_obj = datetime.strptime(time_str, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S')

print ("The type is", type(dt_obj))
print ("The date is", date_time_obj)

Output:

ValueError("time data %r does not match format %r" %(data_string, format))

Format Code List

The format specifiers are mostly the same as for strftime() method. These specifiers are:

fallenvalkyrie

Follow

Improve

Article Tags :

• Python
• Python-datetime

Practice Tags :

• python