(Django) how to get month name?

For English only, you can use the datetime string formatting method of Python, e.g.

>>> today.strftime('%B')
'March'

You can also use Django methods, which will return the name in the current activated language.

In a Django template you can also use:

{{ a_date|date:'F' }}

In a Django view function:

from django.template.defaultfilters import date
date(a_date, 'F')

You can test the later in the Django shell (python manage.py shell) for e.g. Spanish with:

In [1]: from django.utils.translation import get_language, activate

In [2]: activate('es')

In [3]: get_language()
Out[3]: 'es'

In [4]: import datetime

In [5]: today = datetime.date.today()

In [6]: from django.template.defaultfilters import date

In [7]: date(today, 'F')
Out[7]: u'Septiembre'

The Calendar API is another option.

calendar.month_name[3] # would return 'March'

datetime.datetime.strftime(today, '%B') # Outputs 'March'

or

datetime.datetime.strftime(today, '%b') # Outputs 'Mar'

http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html#strftime-strptime-behavior

use the datetime string formatting method, e.g.

>>> today.strftime('%B')
'March'

for more info, and a full list of formatting codes, see the python datetime docs