How do I translate an ISO 8601 datetime string into a Python datetime object

Question

I m getting a datetime string in a format like  2009-05-28T16 15 00   this is ISO 8601  I believe   One hackish option seems to be to parse the string using time strptime and passing the first six elements of the tuple into the datetime constructor  like   datetime datetime  time strptime  2007-03-04T21 08 12     Y- m- dT H  M  S    6     I haven t been able to find a  cleaner  way of doing this  Is there one

User · Answer

Because ISO 8601 allows many variations of optional colons and dashes being present, basically CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss[Z|(+|-)hh:mm]. If you want to use strptime, you need to strip out those variations first.

The goal is to generate a UTC datetime object.

If you just want a basic case that work for UTC with the Z suffix like 2016-06-29T19:36:29.3453Z:

datetime.datetime.strptime(timestamp.translate(None, ':-'), "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%fZ")

If you want to handle timezone offsets like 2016-06-29T19:36:29.3453-0400 or 2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686+05:00 use the following. These will convert all variations into something without variable delimiters like 20080903T205635.450686+0500 making it more consistent/easier to parse.

import re
# This regex removes all colons and all
# dashes EXCEPT for the dash indicating + or - utc offset for the timezone
conformed_timestamp = re.sub(r"[:]|([-](?!((\d{2}[:]\d{2})|(\d{4}))$))", '', timestamp)
datetime.datetime.strptime(conformed_timestamp, "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%f%z" )

If your system does not support the %z strptime directive (you see something like ValueError: 'z' is a bad directive in format '%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%f%z') then you need to manually offset the time from Z (UTC). Note %z may not work on your system in Python versions < 3 as it depended on the C library support which varies across system/Python build type (i.e., Jython, Cython, etc.).

import re
import datetime

# This regex removes all colons and all
# dashes EXCEPT for the dash indicating + or - utc offset for the timezone
conformed_timestamp = re.sub(r"[:]|([-](?!((\d{2}[:]\d{2})|(\d{4}))$))", '', timestamp)

# Split on the offset to remove it. Use a capture group to keep the delimiter
split_timestamp = re.split(r"([+|-])",conformed_timestamp)
main_timestamp = split_timestamp[0]
if len(split_timestamp) == 3:
    sign = split_timestamp[1]
    offset = split_timestamp[2]
else:
    sign = None
    offset = None

# Generate the datetime object without the offset at UTC time
output_datetime = datetime.datetime.strptime(main_timestamp +"Z", "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%fZ" )
if offset:
    # Create timedelta based on offset
    offset_delta = datetime.timedelta(hours=int(sign+offset[:-2]), minutes=int(sign+offset[-2:]))

    # Offset datetime with timedelta
    output_datetime = output_datetime + offset_delta

User · Answer

aniso8601 should handle this  It also understands timezones  Python 2 and Python 3  and it has a reasonable coverage of the rest of ISO nbsp 8601  should you ever need it   import aniso8601 aniso8601 parse datetime  2007-03-04T21 08 12

User · Answer

Both ways   Epoch to ISO time   isoTime   time strftime   Y- m- dT H  M  SZ   time gmtime epochTime     ISO time to Epoch   epochTime   time mktime time strptime isoTime    Y- m- dT H  M  SZ

User · Answer

import datetime  time def convert enddate to seconds self  ts          Takes ISO 8601 format string  and converts into epoch time         dt   datetime datetime strptime ts  -7    Y- m- dT H  M  S  f                     datetime timedelta hours int ts -5 -3                    minutes int ts -2     int ts -6 -5   1       seconds   time mktime dt timetuple      dt microsecond 1000000 0     return seconds   This also includes the milliseconds and time zone   If the time is  2012-09-30T15 31 50 262-08 00   this will convert into epoch time    gt  gt  gt  import datetime  time  gt  gt  gt  ts    2012-09-30T15 31 50 262-08 00   gt  gt  gt  dt   datetime datetime strptime ts  -7    Y- m- dT H  M  S  f    datetime timedelta hours int ts -5 -3    minutes int ts -2     int ts -6 -5   1    gt  gt  gt  seconds   time mktime dt timetuple      dt microsecond 1000000 0  gt  gt  gt  seconds 1348990310 26

User · Answer

Arrow looks promising for this    gt  gt  gt  import arrow  gt  gt  gt  arrow get  2014-11-13T14 53 18 694072 00 00   datetime datetime datetime 2014  11  13  14  53  18  694072  tzinfo tzoffset None  0        Arrow is a Python library that provides a sensible  intelligent way of creating  manipulating  formatting and converting dates and times  Arrow is simple  lightweight and heavily inspired by moment js and requests

User · Answer

You should keep an eye on the timezone information  as you might get into trouble when comparing non-tz-aware datetimes with tz-aware ones   It s probably the best to always make them tz-aware  even if only as UTC   unless you really know why it wouldn t be of any use to do so    ----------------------------------------------- import datetime import pytz import dateutil parser  -----------------------------------------------  utc   pytz utc BERLIN   pytz timezone  Europe Berlin    -----------------------------------------------  def to iso8601 when None  tz BERLIN     if not when      when   datetime datetime now tz    if not when tzinfo      when   tz localize when     when   when strftime   Y- m- dT H  M  S  f z     return  when  -8     when -5     Remove microseconds  -----------------------------------------------  def from iso8601 when None  tz BERLIN      when   dateutil parser parse when    if not  when tzinfo       when   tz localize  when    return  when  -----------------------------------------------

User · Answer

Here is a super simple way to do these kind of conversions  No parsing  or extra libraries required  It is clean  simple  and fast   import datetime import time                                                       Takes the time  in seconds       and returns a string of the time in ISO8601 format    Note  Timezone is UTC                                                     def TimeToISO8601 seconds      strKv   datetime datetime fromtimestamp seconds  strftime   Y- m- d      strKv   strKv    T     strKv   strKv   datetime datetime fromtimestamp seconds  strftime   H  M  S      strKv   strKv   Z     return strKv                                                       Takes a string of the time in ISO8601 format      and returns the time  in seconds     Note  Timezone is UTC                                                     def ISO8601ToTime strISOTime      K1   0    K2   9999999999    K3   0    counter   0    while counter  lt  95       K3    K1   K2    2      strK4   TimeToISO8601 K3       if strK4  lt  strISOTime         K1   K3      if strK4  gt  strISOTime         K2   K3      counter   counter   1    return K3                                                       Takes a string of the time in ISO8601  UTC  format      and returns a python DateTime object    Note  returned value is your local time zone                                                      def ISO8601ToDateTime strISOTime      return time gmtime ISO8601ToTime strISOTime      To test  Test    2014-09-27T12 05 06 9876  print   The test value is      Test  Ans   ISO8601ToTime Test  print   The answer in seconds is      str Ans   print   And a Python datetime object is      str ISO8601ToDateTime Test

User · Answer

Isodate seems to have the most complete support

User · Answer

I haven t tried it yet  but pyiso8601 promises to support this

User · Answer

I prefer using the dateutil library for timezone handling and generally solid date parsing  If you were to get an ISO 8601 string like  2010-05-08T23 41 54 000Z you d have a fun time parsing that with strptime  especially if you didn t know up front whether or not the timezone was included  pyiso8601 has a couple of issues  check their tracker  that I ran into during my usage and it hasn t been updated in a few years  dateutil  by contrast  has been active and worked for me    import dateutil parser yourdate   dateutil parser parse datestring

User · Answer

Since Python 3 7 and no external libraries  you can use the strptime function from the datetime module   datetime datetime strptime  2019-01-04T16 41 24 0200     Y- m- dT H  M  S z     For more formatting options  see here   Python 2 doesn t support the  z format specifier  so it s best to explicitly use Zulu time everywhere if possible   datetime datetime strptime  2007-03-04T21 08 12Z     Y- m- dT H  M  SZ

[python] How do I translate an ISO 8601 datetime string into a Python datetime object?

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