How do I parse an HTTP date-string in Python?

Since Python 3.3 there's email.utils.parsedate_to_datetime which can parse RFC 5322 timestamps (aka IMF-fixdate, Internet Message Format fixed length format, a subset of HTTP-date of RFC 7231).

>>> from email.utils import parsedate_to_datetime
... 
... s = 'Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT'
... parsedate_to_datetime(s)
0: datetime.datetime(1994, 11, 6, 8, 49, 37, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

There's also undocumented http.cookiejar.http2time which can achieve the same as follows:

>>> from datetime import datetime, timezone
... from http.cookiejar import http2time
... 
... s = 'Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT'
... datetime.utcfromtimestamp(http2time(s)).replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc)
1: datetime.datetime(1994, 11, 6, 8, 49, 37, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

It was introduced in Python 2.4 as cookielib.http2time for dealing with Cookie Expires directive which is expressed in the same format.

>>> import email.utils as eut
>>> eut.parsedate('Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:15:29 GMT')
(2009, 9, 23, 22, 15, 29, 0, 1, -1)

If you want a datetime.datetime object, you can do:

def my_parsedate(text):
    return datetime.datetime(*eut.parsedate(text)[:6])