How do I validate a date string format in python?

The Python dateutil library is designed for this (and more). It will automatically convert this to a datetime object for you and raise a ValueError if it can't.

As an example:

>>> from dateutil.parser import parse
>>> parse("2003-09-25")
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

This raises a ValueError if the date is not formatted correctly:

>>> parse("2003-09-251")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/jacinda/envs/dod-backend-dev/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 720, in parse
    return DEFAULTPARSER.parse(timestr, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/jacinda/envs/dod-backend-dev/lib/python2.7/site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 317, in parse
    ret = default.replace(**repl)
ValueError: day is out of range for month

dateutil is also extremely useful if you start needing to parse other formats in the future, as it can handle most known formats intelligently and allows you to modify your specification: dateutil parsing examples.

It also handles timezones if you need that.

Update based on comments: parse also accepts the keyword argument dayfirst which controls whether the day or month is expected to come first if a date is ambiguous. This defaults to False. E.g.

>>> parse('11/12/2001')
>>> datetime.datetime(2001, 11, 12, 0, 0) # Nov 12
>>> parse('11/12/2001', dayfirst=True)
>>> datetime.datetime(2001, 12, 11, 0, 0) # Dec 11

>>> import datetime
>>> def validate(date_text):
        try:
            datetime.datetime.strptime(date_text, '%Y-%m-%d')
        except ValueError:
            raise ValueError("Incorrect data format, should be YYYY-MM-DD")

    
>>> validate('2003-12-23')
>>> validate('2003-12-32')

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#20>", line 1, in <module>
    validate('2003-12-32')
  File "<pyshell#18>", line 5, in validate
    raise ValueError("Incorrect data format, should be YYYY-MM-DD")
ValueError: Incorrect data format, should be YYYY-MM-DD