Convert datetime object to a String of date only in Python

If you are looking for a simple way of datetime to string conversion and can omit the format. You can convert datetime object to str and then use array slicing.

In [1]: from datetime import datetime

In [2]: now = datetime.now()

In [3]: str(now)
Out[3]: '2019-04-26 18:03:50.941332'

In [5]: str(now)[:10]
Out[5]: '2019-04-26'

In [6]: str(now)[:19]
Out[6]: '2019-04-26 18:03:50'

But note the following thing. If other solutions will rise an AttributeError when the variable is None in this case you will receive a 'None' string.

In [9]: str(None)[:19]
Out[9]: 'None'

date and datetime objects (and time as well) support a mini-language to specify output, and there are two ways to access it:

  • direct method call: dt.strftime('format here')
  • format method (python 2.6+): '{:format here}'.format(dt)
  • f-strings (python 3.6+): f'{dt:format here}'

So your example could look like:

  • dt.strftime('The date is %b %d, %Y')
  • 'The date is {:%b %d, %Y}'.format(dt)
  • f'The date is {dt:%b %d, %Y}'

In all three cases the output is:

The date is Feb 23, 2012

For completeness' sake: you can also directly access the attributes of the object, but then you only get the numbers:

'The date is %s/%s/%s' % (dt.month, dt.day, dt.year)
# The date is 02/23/2012

The time taken to learn the mini-language is worth it.

For reference, here are the codes used in the mini-language:

  • %a Weekday as locale’s abbreviated name.
  • %A Weekday as locale’s full name.
  • %w Weekday as a decimal number, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday.
  • %d Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number.
  • %b Month as locale’s abbreviated name.
  • %B Month as locale’s full name.
  • %m Month as a zero-padded decimal number. 01, ..., 12
  • %y Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, ..., 99
  • %Y Year with century as a decimal number. 1970, 1988, 2001, 2013
  • %H Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, ..., 23
  • %I Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. 01, ..., 12
  • %p Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM.
  • %M Minute as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, ..., 59
  • %S Second as a zero-padded decimal number. 00, ..., 59
  • %f Microsecond as a decimal number, zero-padded on the left. 000000, ..., 999999
  • %z UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty if naive), +0000, -0400, +1030
  • %Z Time zone name (empty if naive), UTC, EST, CST
  • %j Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal number. 001, ..., 366
  • %U Week number of the year (Sunday is the first) as a zero padded decimal number.
  • %W Week number of the year (Monday is first) as a decimal number.
  • %c Locale’s appropriate date and time representation.
  • %x Locale’s appropriate date representation.
  • %X Locale’s appropriate time representation.
  • %% A literal '%' character.

Another option:

import datetime
now=datetime.datetime.now()
now.isoformat()
# ouptut --> '2016-03-09T08:18:20.860968'

You can use strftime to help you format your date.

E.g.,

import datetime
t = datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 23, 0, 0)
t.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

will yield:

'02/23/2012'

More information about formatting see here

Tags:

Python

Datetime

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