Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

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

Posted by Pedro Leão
Pedro Leão
2,645 Points

to_string function using date.strftime and date.strptime not returning the right string

The challenge says that you should create a 'to_string' function that returns '24 September 2012'. And I created a function that gives the error: to_string returned the wrong string. Returned '24 September 2012'.

The code I used was the following:

import datetime

def to_string(datetime_object): t = datetime_object.strptime("09/24/12", "%m/%d/%y") return t.strftime("%d %B %Y")

Can anyone help me with this? Did anyone solved this already that could post here their code? Thanks

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(datetime_object):
    string = datetime_object.strptime("09/24/12", "%m/%d/%y")
    return string.strftime("%d %B %Y")

2 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,441 Points

You're doing more work than necessary. `datetime.strftime directly:

## Examples
# to_string(datetime_object) => "24 September 2012"
# from_string("09/24/12 18:30", "%m/%d/%y %H:%M") => datetime
def to_string(datetime_object):
    string = datetime_object.strftime("%d %B %Y")
    return string
Pedro Leão
Pedro Leão
2,645 Points

Great! It worked. Thanks a lot. This will probably be helpful for further challenges. Really appreciated

Jonathan Endersby
Jonathan Endersby
9,807 Points
Jonathan Endersby
Jonathan Endersby
9,807 Points

Chris Freeman could you remove the string and just have it as 'return datetime_object.strfttime("%d %B %Y")' ?