Converting string into datetime

Question

I ve got a huge list of date-times like this as strings   Jun 1 2005  1 33PM Aug 28 1999 12 00AM   I m going to be shoving these back into proper datetime fields in a database so I need to magic them into real datetime objects    This is going through Django s ORM so I can t use SQL to do the conversion on insert

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Use the third party dateutil library   from dateutil import parser parser parse  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM      datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0    It can handle most date formats  including the one you need to parse  It s more convenient than strptime as it can guess the correct format most of the time   It s very useful for writing tests  where readability is more important than performance   You can install it with   pip install python-dateutil

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Remember this and you didn t need to get confused in datetime conversion again   String to datetime object   strptime  datetime object to other formats   strftime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM  is equals to   b  d  Y  I  M p      b    Month as locale   s abbreviated name Jun        d    Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number 1        Y    Year with century as a decimal number 2015        I    Hour  12-hour clock  as a zero-padded decimal number 01        M    Minute as a zero-padded decimal number 33        p    Locale   s equivalent of either AM or PM PM    so you need strptime i-e converting string to    gt  gt  gt  dates       gt  gt  gt  dates append  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM    gt  gt  gt  dates append  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM    gt  gt  gt  from datetime import datetime  gt  gt  gt  for d in dates          date   datetime strptime d    b  d  Y  I  M p           print type date          print date        Output   lt type  datetime datetime  gt  2005-06-01 13 33 00  lt type  datetime datetime  gt  1999-08-28 00 00 00   What if you have different format of dates you can use panda or dateutil parse   gt  gt  gt  import dateutil  gt  gt  gt  dates       gt  gt  gt  dates append  12 1 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  1 1 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  1 12 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  June 1 2017 1 30 00AM    gt  gt  gt   parser parse x  for x in dates    OutPut   datetime datetime 2017  12  1  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  1  1  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  1  12  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  6  1  1  30

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Check out strptime in the time module   It is the inverse of strftime     python  gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  my time   time strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p   time struct time tm year 2005  tm mon 6  tm mday 1                   tm hour 13  tm min 33  tm sec 0                   tm wday 2  tm yday 152  tm isdst -1   timestamp   time mktime my time    convert time object to datetime from datetime import datetime my datetime   datetime fromtimestamp timestamp    convert time object to date from datetime import date my date   date fromtimestamp timestamp

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Django Timezone aware datetime object example   import datetime from django utils timezone import get current timezone tz   get current timezone    format     b  d  Y  I  M p  date object   datetime datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM   format  date obj   tz localize date object    This conversion is very important for Django and Python when you have USE TZ   True   RuntimeWarning  DateTimeField MyModel created received a naive datetime  2016-03-04 00 00 00  while time zone support is active

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See my answer   In real-world data this is a real problem  multiple  mismatched  incomplete  inconsistent and multilanguage region date formats  often mixed freely in one dataset  It s not ok for production code to fail  let alone go exception-happy like a fox   We need to try   catch multiple datetime formats fmt1 fmt2     fmtn and suppress handle the exceptions  from strptime    for all those that mismatch  and in particular  avoid needing a yukky n-deep indented ladder of try  catch clauses   From my solution  def try strptime s  fmts    d- b- y    m  d  Y         for fmt in fmts          try              return datetime strptime s  fmt          except              continue      return None   or reraise the ValueError if no format matched  if you prefer

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Create a small utility function like   def date datestr     format   Y- m- d        from datetime import datetime     if not datestr          return datetime today   date       return datetime strptime datestr  format  date     This is versatile enough    If you don t pass any arguments it will return today s date  There s a date format as default that you can override  You can easily modify it to return a datetime

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Use the third party dateutil library   from dateutil import parser parser parse  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM      datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0    It can handle most date formats  including the one you need to parse  It s more convenient than strptime as it can guess the correct format most of the time   It s very useful for writing tests  where readability is more important than performance   You can install it with   pip install python-dateutil

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Check out strptime in the time module   It is the inverse of strftime     python  gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  my time   time strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p   time struct time tm year 2005  tm mon 6  tm mday 1                   tm hour 13  tm min 33  tm sec 0                   tm wday 2  tm yday 152  tm isdst -1   timestamp   time mktime my time    convert time object to datetime from datetime import datetime my datetime   datetime fromtimestamp timestamp    convert time object to date from datetime import date my date   date fromtimestamp timestamp

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If you want only date format then you can manually convert it by passing your individual fields like    gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  date   datetime date int  2017   int  12   int  21     gt  gt  gt  date datetime date 2017  12  21   gt  gt  gt  type date   lt type  datetime date  gt    You can pass your split string values to convert it into date type like   selected month rec    2017-09-01  date formate   datetime date int selected month rec split  -   0   int selected month rec split  -   1   int selected month rec split  -   2      You will get the resulting value in date format

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Here are two solutions using Pandas to convert dates formatted as strings into datetime date objects   import pandas as pd  dates     2015-12-25    2015-12-26      1  Use a list comprehension   gt  gt  gt   d date   for d in pd to datetime dates    datetime date 2015  12  25   datetime date 2015  12  26      2  Convert the dates to a DatetimeIndex and extract the python dates   gt  gt  gt  pd DatetimeIndex dates  date tolist    datetime date 2015  12  25   datetime date 2015  12  26     Timings  dates   pd DatetimeIndex start  2000-1-1   end  2010-1-1   freq  d   date tolist     gt  gt  gt   timeit  d date   for d in pd to datetime dates     100 loops  best of 3  3 11 ms per loop   gt  gt  gt   timeit pd DatetimeIndex dates  date tolist     100 loops  best of 3  6 85 ms per loop   And here is how to convert the OP s original date-time examples   datetimes     Jun 1 2005  1 33PM    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM     gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime datetimes  to pydatetime   tolist    datetime datetime 2005  6  1  13  33     datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0     There are many options for converting from the strings to Pandas Timestamps using to datetime  so check the docs if you need anything special   Likewise  Timestamps have many properties and methods that can be accessed in addition to  date

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Here are two solutions using Pandas to convert dates formatted as strings into datetime date objects   import pandas as pd  dates     2015-12-25    2015-12-26      1  Use a list comprehension   gt  gt  gt   d date   for d in pd to datetime dates    datetime date 2015  12  25   datetime date 2015  12  26      2  Convert the dates to a DatetimeIndex and extract the python dates   gt  gt  gt  pd DatetimeIndex dates  date tolist    datetime date 2015  12  25   datetime date 2015  12  26     Timings  dates   pd DatetimeIndex start  2000-1-1   end  2010-1-1   freq  d   date tolist     gt  gt  gt   timeit  d date   for d in pd to datetime dates     100 loops  best of 3  3 11 ms per loop   gt  gt  gt   timeit pd DatetimeIndex dates  date tolist     100 loops  best of 3  6 85 ms per loop   And here is how to convert the OP s original date-time examples   datetimes     Jun 1 2005  1 33PM    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM     gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime datetimes  to pydatetime   tolist    datetime datetime 2005  6  1  13  33     datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0     There are many options for converting from the strings to Pandas Timestamps using to datetime  so check the docs if you need anything special   Likewise  Timestamps have many properties and methods that can be accessed in addition to  date

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It would do the helpful for converting string to datetime and also with time zone  def convert string to time date string  timezone       from datetime import datetime     import pytz     date time obj   datetime strptime date string  26     Y- m- d  H  M  S  f       date time obj timezone   pytz timezone timezone  localize date time obj       return date time obj timezone  date    2018-08-14 13 09 24 543953 00 00  TIME ZONE    UTC  date time obj timezone   convert string to time date  TIME ZONE

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It would do the helpful for converting string to datetime and also with time zone  def convert string to time date string  timezone       from datetime import datetime     import pytz     date time obj   datetime strptime date string  26     Y- m- d  H  M  S  f       date time obj timezone   pytz timezone timezone  localize date time obj       return date time obj timezone  date    2018-08-14 13 09 24 543953 00 00  TIME ZONE    UTC  date time obj timezone   convert string to time date  TIME ZONE

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Many timestamps have an implied timezone  To ensure that your code will work in every timezone  you should use UTC internally and attach a timezone each time a foreign object enters the system   Python 3 2     gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime strptime           March 5  2014  20 13 50     B  d   Y   H  M  S        replace tzinfo datetime timezone datetime timedelta hours -3

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emp   pd read csv  C   py  programs  pandas 2  pandas  employees csv   emp info     it shows  Start Date Time  Column and  Last Login Time  both are  object   strings  in data-frame   lt class  pandas core frame DataFrame  gt  RangeIndex  1000 entries  0 to 999 Data columns  total 8 columns   First Name           933 non-null object Gender               855 non-null object    Start Date           1000 non-null object  Last Login Time      1000 non-null object    Salary               1000 non-null int64 Bonus                1000 non-null float64 Senior Management    933 non-null object Team                 957 non-null object dtypes  float64 1   int64 1   object 6  memory usage  62 6  KB   By using parse dates option in read csv mention you can convert your string datetime into pandas datetime format   emp   pd read csv  C   py  programs  pandas 2  pandas  employees csv   parse dates   Start Date    Last Login Time    emp info      lt class  pandas core frame DataFrame  gt  RangeIndex  1000 entries  0 to 999 Data columns  total 8 columns   First Name           933 non-null object Gender               855 non-null object    Start Date           1000 non-null datetime64 ns  Last Login Time      1000 non-null datetime64 ns     Salary               1000 non-null int64 Bonus                1000 non-null float64 Senior Management    933 non-null object Team                 957 non-null object dtypes  datetime64 ns  2   float64 1   int64 1   object 4  memory usage  62 6  KB

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datetime strptime is the main routine for parsing strings into datetimes  It can handle all sorts of formats  with the format determined by a format string you give it   from datetime import datetime  datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p     The resulting datetime object is timezone-naive   Links    Python documentation for strptime  Python 2  Python 3 Python documentation for strptime strftime format strings  Python 2  Python 3 strftime org is also a really nice reference for strftime   Notes    strptime    string parse time  strftime    string format time  Pronounce it out loud today  amp  you won t have to search for it again in 6 months

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Create a small utility function like   def date datestr     format   Y- m- d        from datetime import datetime     if not datestr          return datetime today   date       return datetime strptime datestr  format  date     This is versatile enough    If you don t pass any arguments it will return today s date  There s a date format as default that you can override  You can easily modify it to return a datetime

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You can also check out dateparser     dateparser provides modules to easily parse localized dates in almost   any string formats commonly found on web pages    Install     pip install dateparser   This is  I think  the easiest way you can parse dates      The most straightforward way is to use the dateparser parse function    that wraps around most of the functionality in the module    Sample Code   import dateparser  t1    Jun 1 2005  1 33PM  t2    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM   dt1   dateparser parse t1  dt2   dateparser parse t2   print dt1  print dt2    Output   2005-06-01 13 33 00 1999-08-28 00 00 00

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I have put together a project that can convert some really neat expressions  Check out timestring  Here are some examples below  pip install timestring  gt  gt  gt  import timestring  gt  gt  gt  timestring Date  monday  aug 15th 2015 at 8 40 pm    lt timestring Date 2015-08-15 20 40 00 4491909392 gt   gt  gt  gt  timestring Date  monday  aug 15th 2015 at 8 40 pm   date datetime datetime 2015  8  15  20  40   gt  gt  gt  timestring Range  next week    lt timestring Range From 03 10 14 00 00 00 to 03 03 14 00 00 00 4496004880 gt   gt  gt  gt   timestring Range  next week   start date  timestring Range  next week   end date   datetime datetime 2014  3  10  0  0   datetime datetime 2014  3  14  0  0

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Django Timezone aware datetime object example   import datetime from django utils timezone import get current timezone tz   get current timezone    format     b  d  Y  I  M p  date object   datetime datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM   format  date obj   tz localize date object    This conversion is very important for Django and Python when you have USE TZ   True   RuntimeWarning  DateTimeField MyModel created received a naive datetime  2016-03-04 00 00 00  while time zone support is active

User · Answer

Check out strptime in the time module   It is the inverse of strftime     python  gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  my time   time strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p   time struct time tm year 2005  tm mon 6  tm mday 1                   tm hour 13  tm min 33  tm sec 0                   tm wday 2  tm yday 152  tm isdst -1   timestamp   time mktime my time    convert time object to datetime from datetime import datetime my datetime   datetime fromtimestamp timestamp    convert time object to date from datetime import date my date   date fromtimestamp timestamp

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python  gt   3 7 to convert YYYY-MM-DD string to datetime object  datetime fromisoformat could be used  from datetime import datetime  date string    quot 2012-12-12 10 10 10 quot  print  datetime fromisoformat date string   2012-12-12 10 10 10

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datetime strptime is the main routine for parsing strings into datetimes  It can handle all sorts of formats  with the format determined by a format string you give it   from datetime import datetime  datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p     The resulting datetime object is timezone-naive   Links    Python documentation for strptime  Python 2  Python 3 Python documentation for strptime strftime format strings  Python 2  Python 3 strftime org is also a really nice reference for strftime   Notes    strptime    string parse time  strftime    string format time  Pronounce it out loud today  amp  you won t have to search for it again in 6 months

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Something that isn t mentioned here and is useful  adding a suffix to the day  I decoupled the suffix logic so you can use it for any number you like  not just dates   import time  def num suffix n               Returns the suffix for any given int             suf     th   st    nd    rd       n   abs n    wise guy     tens   int str n  -2        units   n   10     if tens  gt  10 and tens  lt  20          return suf 0    teens with  th      elif units  lt   3          return suf units      else          return suf 0     th   def day suffix t               Returns the suffix of the given struct time day             return num suffix t tm mday     Examples print num suffix 123  print num suffix 3431  print num suffix 1234  print    print day suffix time strptime  1 Dec 00     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  2 Nov 01     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  3 Oct 02     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  4 Sep 03     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  13 Nov 90     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  14 Oct 10     d  b  y

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See my answer   In real-world data this is a real problem  multiple  mismatched  incomplete  inconsistent and multilanguage region date formats  often mixed freely in one dataset  It s not ok for production code to fail  let alone go exception-happy like a fox   We need to try   catch multiple datetime formats fmt1 fmt2     fmtn and suppress handle the exceptions  from strptime    for all those that mismatch  and in particular  avoid needing a yukky n-deep indented ladder of try  catch clauses   From my solution  def try strptime s  fmts    d- b- y    m  d  Y         for fmt in fmts          try              return datetime strptime s  fmt          except              continue      return None   or reraise the ValueError if no format matched  if you prefer

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I personally like the solution using the parser module  which is the second Answer to this question and is beautiful  as you don t have to construct any string literals to get it working  BUT  one downside is that it is 90  slower than the accepted answer with strptime   from dateutil import parser from datetime import datetime import timeit  def dt        dt   parser parse  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM   def strptime        datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p    print timeit timeit stmt dt  number 10  5   print timeit timeit stmt strptime  number 10  5    gt 10 70296801342902  gt 1 3627995655316933   As long as you are not doing this a million times over and over again  I still  think the parser method is more convenient and will handle most of the time formats automatically

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You can also check out dateparser     dateparser provides modules to easily parse localized dates in almost   any string formats commonly found on web pages    Install     pip install dateparser   This is  I think  the easiest way you can parse dates      The most straightforward way is to use the dateparser parse function    that wraps around most of the functionality in the module    Sample Code   import dateparser  t1    Jun 1 2005  1 33PM  t2    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM   dt1   dateparser parse t1  dt2   dateparser parse t2   print dt1  print dt2    Output   2005-06-01 13 33 00 1999-08-28 00 00 00

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If your string is in ISO8601 format and you have Python 3 7  you can use the following simple code  import datetime date  aDate   datetime date fromisoformat  2020-10-04    for dates and import datetime datetime  aDateTime   datetime datetime fromisoformat  2020-10-04 22 47 00    for strings containing date and time  If timestamps are included the function datetime datetime isoformat   supports the following format YYYY-MM-DD  HH  MM  SS  fff fff      HH MM  SS  ffffff      where   matches any single character  See also here and here

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You can use easy date to make it easy   import date converter converted date   date converter string to datetime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p

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arrow offers many useful functions for dates and times  This bit of code provides an answer to the question and shows that arrow is also capable of formatting dates easily and displaying information for other locales    gt  gt  gt  import arrow  gt  gt  gt  dateStrings      Jun 1  2005 1 33PM    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM     gt  gt  gt  for dateString in dateStrings          dateString         arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   datetime         arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   format  ddd  Do MMM YYYY HH mm           arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   humanize locale  de        Jun 1  2005 1 33PM  datetime datetime 2005  6  1  13  33  tzinfo tzutc     Wed  1st Jun 2005 13 33   vor 11 Jahren   Aug 28 1999 12 00AM  datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0  tzinfo tzutc     Sat  28th Aug 1999 00 00   vor 17 Jahren    See http   arrow readthedocs io en latest  for more

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emp   pd read csv  C   py  programs  pandas 2  pandas  employees csv   emp info     it shows  Start Date Time  Column and  Last Login Time  both are  object   strings  in data-frame   lt class  pandas core frame DataFrame  gt  RangeIndex  1000 entries  0 to 999 Data columns  total 8 columns   First Name           933 non-null object Gender               855 non-null object    Start Date           1000 non-null object  Last Login Time      1000 non-null object    Salary               1000 non-null int64 Bonus                1000 non-null float64 Senior Management    933 non-null object Team                 957 non-null object dtypes  float64 1   int64 1   object 6  memory usage  62 6  KB   By using parse dates option in read csv mention you can convert your string datetime into pandas datetime format   emp   pd read csv  C   py  programs  pandas 2  pandas  employees csv   parse dates   Start Date    Last Login Time    emp info      lt class  pandas core frame DataFrame  gt  RangeIndex  1000 entries  0 to 999 Data columns  total 8 columns   First Name           933 non-null object Gender               855 non-null object    Start Date           1000 non-null datetime64 ns  Last Login Time      1000 non-null datetime64 ns     Salary               1000 non-null int64 Bonus                1000 non-null float64 Senior Management    933 non-null object Team                 957 non-null object dtypes  datetime64 ns  2   float64 1   int64 1   object 4  memory usage  62 6  KB

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Use the third party dateutil library   from dateutil import parser parser parse  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM      datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0    It can handle most date formats  including the one you need to parse  It s more convenient than strptime as it can guess the correct format most of the time   It s very useful for writing tests  where readability is more important than performance   You can install it with   pip install python-dateutil

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python  gt   3 7 to convert YYYY-MM-DD string to datetime object  datetime fromisoformat could be used  from datetime import datetime  date string    quot 2012-12-12 10 10 10 quot  print  datetime fromisoformat date string   2012-12-12 10 10 10

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Many timestamps have an implied timezone  To ensure that your code will work in every timezone  you should use UTC internally and attach a timezone each time a foreign object enters the system   Python 3 2     gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime strptime           March 5  2014  20 13 50     B  d   Y   H  M  S        replace tzinfo datetime timezone datetime timedelta hours -3

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datetime strptime is the main routine for parsing strings into datetimes  It can handle all sorts of formats  with the format determined by a format string you give it   from datetime import datetime  datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p     The resulting datetime object is timezone-naive   Links    Python documentation for strptime  Python 2  Python 3 Python documentation for strptime strftime format strings  Python 2  Python 3 strftime org is also a really nice reference for strftime   Notes    strptime    string parse time  strftime    string format time  Pronounce it out loud today  amp  you won t have to search for it again in 6 months

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It seems using pandas Timestamp is the fastest import pandas as pd   N   1000  l     Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     N  list pd to datetime l  format format     timeit     list pd to datetime l  format format   1 58 ms    21 6   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  1000 loops each   Other solutions from datetime import datetime  timeit     list map lambda x  datetime strptime x  format   l   9 41 ms    95 7   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  100 loops each   from dateutil parser import parse  timeit     list map lambda x  parse x   l   73 8 ms    1 14 ms per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10 loops each   If the string is ISO8601 string please use csio8601 import ciso8601  l     2014-01-09     N   timeit     list map lambda x  ciso8601 parse datetime x   l   186   s    4 13   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10000 loops each

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Use the third party dateutil library   from dateutil import parser parser parse  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM      datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0    It can handle most date formats  including the one you need to parse  It s more convenient than strptime as it can guess the correct format most of the time   It s very useful for writing tests  where readability is more important than performance   You can install it with   pip install python-dateutil

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In  34   import datetime  In  35    now   datetime datetime now    In  36    now Out 36   datetime datetime 2016  1  19  9  47  0  432000   In  37   print  now 2016-01-19 09 47 00 432000  In  38    parsed   datetime datetime strptime str  now    Y- m- d  H  M  S  f    In  39    parsed Out 39   datetime datetime 2016  1  19  9  47  0  432000   In  40   assert  now     parsed

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If you want only date format then you can manually convert it by passing your individual fields like    gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  date   datetime date int  2017   int  12   int  21     gt  gt  gt  date datetime date 2017  12  21   gt  gt  gt  type date   lt type  datetime date  gt    You can pass your split string values to convert it into date type like   selected month rec    2017-09-01  date formate   datetime date int selected month rec split  -   0   int selected month rec split  -   1   int selected month rec split  -   2      You will get the resulting value in date format

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It seems using pandas Timestamp is the fastest import pandas as pd   N   1000  l     Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     N  list pd to datetime l  format format     timeit     list pd to datetime l  format format   1 58 ms    21 6   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  1000 loops each   Other solutions from datetime import datetime  timeit     list map lambda x  datetime strptime x  format   l   9 41 ms    95 7   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  100 loops each   from dateutil parser import parse  timeit     list map lambda x  parse x   l   73 8 ms    1 14 ms per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10 loops each   If the string is ISO8601 string please use csio8601 import ciso8601  l     2014-01-09     N   timeit     list map lambda x  ciso8601 parse datetime x   l   186   s    4 13   s per loop  mean    std  dev  of 7 runs  10000 loops each

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If your string is in ISO8601 format and you have Python 3 7  you can use the following simple code  import datetime date  aDate   datetime date fromisoformat  2020-10-04    for dates and import datetime datetime  aDateTime   datetime datetime fromisoformat  2020-10-04 22 47 00    for strings containing date and time  If timestamps are included the function datetime datetime isoformat   supports the following format YYYY-MM-DD  HH  MM  SS  fff fff      HH MM  SS  ffffff      where   matches any single character  See also here and here

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Check out strptime in the time module   It is the inverse of strftime     python  gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  my time   time strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p   time struct time tm year 2005  tm mon 6  tm mday 1                   tm hour 13  tm min 33  tm sec 0                   tm wday 2  tm yday 152  tm isdst -1   timestamp   time mktime my time    convert time object to datetime from datetime import datetime my datetime   datetime fromtimestamp timestamp    convert time object to date from datetime import date my date   date fromtimestamp timestamp

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I have put together a project that can convert some really neat expressions  Check out timestring  Here are some examples below  pip install timestring  gt  gt  gt  import timestring  gt  gt  gt  timestring Date  monday  aug 15th 2015 at 8 40 pm    lt timestring Date 2015-08-15 20 40 00 4491909392 gt   gt  gt  gt  timestring Date  monday  aug 15th 2015 at 8 40 pm   date datetime datetime 2015  8  15  20  40   gt  gt  gt  timestring Range  next week    lt timestring Range From 03 10 14 00 00 00 to 03 03 14 00 00 00 4496004880 gt   gt  gt  gt   timestring Range  next week   start date  timestring Range  next week   end date   datetime datetime 2014  3  10  0  0   datetime datetime 2014  3  14  0  0

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I personally like the solution using the parser module  which is the second Answer to this question and is beautiful  as you don t have to construct any string literals to get it working  BUT  one downside is that it is 90  slower than the accepted answer with strptime   from dateutil import parser from datetime import datetime import timeit  def dt        dt   parser parse  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM   def strptime        datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p    print timeit timeit stmt dt  number 10  5   print timeit timeit stmt strptime  number 10  5    gt 10 70296801342902  gt 1 3627995655316933   As long as you are not doing this a million times over and over again  I still  think the parser method is more convenient and will handle most of the time formats automatically

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In  34   import datetime  In  35    now   datetime datetime now    In  36    now Out 36   datetime datetime 2016  1  19  9  47  0  432000   In  37   print  now 2016-01-19 09 47 00 432000  In  38    parsed   datetime datetime strptime str  now    Y- m- d  H  M  S  f    In  39    parsed Out 39   datetime datetime 2016  1  19  9  47  0  432000   In  40   assert  now     parsed

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You can use easy date to make it easy   import date converter converted date   date converter string to datetime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p

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arrow offers many useful functions for dates and times  This bit of code provides an answer to the question and shows that arrow is also capable of formatting dates easily and displaying information for other locales    gt  gt  gt  import arrow  gt  gt  gt  dateStrings      Jun 1  2005 1 33PM    Aug 28 1999 12 00AM     gt  gt  gt  for dateString in dateStrings          dateString         arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   datetime         arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   format  ddd  Do MMM YYYY HH mm           arrow get dateString replace             MMM D YYYY H mmA   humanize locale  de        Jun 1  2005 1 33PM  datetime datetime 2005  6  1  13  33  tzinfo tzutc     Wed  1st Jun 2005 13 33   vor 11 Jahren   Aug 28 1999 12 00AM  datetime datetime 1999  8  28  0  0  tzinfo tzutc     Sat  28th Aug 1999 00 00   vor 17 Jahren    See http   arrow readthedocs io en latest  for more

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Something that isn t mentioned here and is useful  adding a suffix to the day  I decoupled the suffix logic so you can use it for any number you like  not just dates   import time  def num suffix n               Returns the suffix for any given int             suf     th   st    nd    rd       n   abs n    wise guy     tens   int str n  -2        units   n   10     if tens  gt  10 and tens  lt  20          return suf 0    teens with  th      elif units  lt   3          return suf units      else          return suf 0     th   def day suffix t               Returns the suffix of the given struct time day             return num suffix t tm mday     Examples print num suffix 123  print num suffix 3431  print num suffix 1234  print    print day suffix time strptime  1 Dec 00     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  2 Nov 01     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  3 Oct 02     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  4 Sep 03     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  13 Nov 90     d  b  y    print day suffix time strptime  14 Oct 10     d  b  y

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Remember this and you didn t need to get confused in datetime conversion again   String to datetime object   strptime  datetime object to other formats   strftime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM  is equals to   b  d  Y  I  M p      b    Month as locale   s abbreviated name Jun        d    Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number 1        Y    Year with century as a decimal number 2015        I    Hour  12-hour clock  as a zero-padded decimal number 01        M    Minute as a zero-padded decimal number 33        p    Locale   s equivalent of either AM or PM PM    so you need strptime i-e converting string to    gt  gt  gt  dates       gt  gt  gt  dates append  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM    gt  gt  gt  dates append  Aug 28 1999 12 00AM    gt  gt  gt  from datetime import datetime  gt  gt  gt  for d in dates          date   datetime strptime d    b  d  Y  I  M p           print type date          print date        Output   lt type  datetime datetime  gt  2005-06-01 13 33 00  lt type  datetime datetime  gt  1999-08-28 00 00 00   What if you have different format of dates you can use panda or dateutil parse   gt  gt  gt  import dateutil  gt  gt  gt  dates       gt  gt  gt  dates append  12 1 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  1 1 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  1 12 2017    gt  gt  gt  dates append  June 1 2017 1 30 00AM    gt  gt  gt   parser parse x  for x in dates    OutPut   datetime datetime 2017  12  1  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  1  1  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  1  12  0  0   datetime datetime 2017  6  1  1  30

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datetime strptime is the main routine for parsing strings into datetimes  It can handle all sorts of formats  with the format determined by a format string you give it   from datetime import datetime  datetime object   datetime strptime  Jun 1 2005  1 33PM     b  d  Y  I  M p     The resulting datetime object is timezone-naive   Links    Python documentation for strptime  Python 2  Python 3 Python documentation for strptime strftime format strings  Python 2  Python 3 strftime org is also a really nice reference for strftime   Notes    strptime    string parse time  strftime    string format time  Pronounce it out loud today  amp  you won t have to search for it again in 6 months

[python] Converting string into datetime

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