Python Date Examples: Date Time Format, Convert String to Datetime

In Python, dates are objects. To use datetime in Python, you need to import datetime module.

from datetime import datetime

Create a date object

d = date(2020, 5, 11)
d = datetime.strptime("2020-5-11", "%d-%m-%Y")

Convert a string to date datetime

2021-01-11 15:36:32 +0800

Convert a string date to a timestamp and vice versa

start_date = "1-1-1980"
d = datetime.strptime(start_date, "%d-%m-%Y")
timestamp = int(datetime.timestamp(d))

date_object = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)

Get the current date and timestamp

import time
from datetime import date
//timestamp
ts = time.time()
//today
today = date.today()
print("Today is ", today) //Today is 2020-06-17

Print date in a regular format

from datetime import datetime, date

print datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")
print date.today().strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
print any_date_object.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
print "{:%d-%m-%Y}".format(datetime.now())

Calculate the number of days between the two dates

date1 = date(2020, 5, 15)
date2 = date(2020, 5, 59)
diff = date2 - date1

Convert datetime to date

The date() method can be used.

<datetime_object>.date()
datetime.datetime.now().date()

Get the last day of a month

Calendar module with monthrange() method can be used to retrieve the last day of a month. Calendar allows you to output calendars like the Unix cal program, and provides additional useful functions related to the calendar.

monthrange() returns the weekday of the first day of the month and the number of days in a month, for the specified year and month.

from calendar import monthrange

last_day = monthrange(2020, 2)[1]

Format codes

A reference of all the legal format codes:

Directive	Description	Example
%a	Weekday, short version	Thu
%A	Weekday, full version	Thursday
%w	Weekday as a number 0-6, 0 is Sunday	4
%d	Day of month 01-31	25
%b	Month name, short version	Nov
%B	Month name, full version	November
%m	Month as a number 01-12	10
%y	Year, short version, without century	19
%Y	Year, full version	2020
%H	Hour 00-23	18
%I	Hour 00-12	07
%p	AM/PM	AM
%M	Minute 00-59	31
%S	Second 00-59	02
%f	Microsecond 000000-999999	555544
%z	UTC offset	+0300
%Z	Timezone	CST
%j	Day number of year 001-366	263
%U	Week number of year, Sunday as the first day of week, 00-53	50
%W	Week number of year, Monday as the first day of week, 00-53	26
%c	Local version of date and time	Mon Dec 31 17:41:00 2018
%x	Local version of date	11/22/20
%X	Local version of time	13:50:00
%%	A % character	%