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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Dates and Times strftime & strptime

timestrings.py

Create a new function named from_string that takes two arguments: a date as a string and an strftime-compatible format string, and returns a datetime created from them.

timestrings.py
## Examples
# to_string(datetime_object) => "24 September 2012"
# from_string("09/24/12 18:30", "%m/%d/%y %H:%M") => datetime

import datetime


def to_string(dt1):
    return dt1.strftime("%d %B %Y")

def from_string(date, string):
    now = datetime.datetime.now()
    return now.strptime(string, "%d %B %Y")

2 Answers

Christian Mangeng
Christian Mangeng
15,970 Points

Hi Pankaj,

it is quite straightforward: the function should format the date argument with the format string argument, using .strptime(). That's all. You don't need the current time, and the format string is flexible in this case.

def from_string(date, format):
    return datetime.datetime.strptime(date, format)

import datetime

def to_string(dt1): return dt1.strftime("%d %B %Y")

def from_string(date, format): return datetime.datetime.strptime(date, format)