How do I turn a python datetime into a string, with readable format date?
Here is how you can accomplish the same using python's general formatting function...
>>>from datetime import datetime
>>>"{:%B %d, %Y}".format(datetime.now())
The formatting characters used here are the same as those used by strftime. Don't miss the leading :
in the format specifier.
Using format() instead of strftime() in most cases can make the code more readable, easier to write and consistent with the way formatted output is generated...
>>>"{} today's date is: {:%B %d, %Y}".format("Andre", datetime.now())
Compare the above with the following strftime() alternative...
>>>"{} today's date is {}".format("Andre", datetime.now().strftime("%B %d, %Y"))
Moreover, the following is not going to work...
>>>datetime.now().strftime("%s %B %d, %Y" % "Andre")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#11>", line 1, in <module>
datetime.now().strftime("%s %B %d, %Y" % "Andre")
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string
And so on...
The datetime class has a method strftime. The Python docs documents the different formats it accepts:
- Python 2: strftime() Behavior
- Python 3: strftime() Behavior
For this specific example, it would look something like:
my_datetime.strftime("%B %d, %Y")