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I have the following string which I am trying to convert to a datetime in python

From django template I am getting the following date format:

July 1, 2013, midnight

I am trying to convert the string above into a date time format

date_object = datetime.strptime(x, '%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p')

It throws a format error

time data 'July 1, 2013, midnight' does not match format '%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p'

Lennart Regebro
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smndak
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  • Post your code so we can review it. Show what you tried and what the result was. – Chris Johnson Sep 02 '13 at 01:30
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    That example doesn't really explain the format. Will it always say midnight afterwards? Could it say something else (and does it matter since it's just the time)? – David Robinson Sep 02 '13 at 01:30

2 Answers2

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Your best shot is probably the parsedatetime module.

Here's your example:

>>> import parsedatetime
>>> cal = parsedatetime.Calendar()
>>> cal.parse('July 1, 2013, midnight')
((2013, 7, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 245, 0), 3)

cal.parse() returns a tuple of two items. The first is the modified parsedatetime.Calendar object, the second is an integer, as explained in the docstring of the parse method:

  • 0 = not parsed at all
  • 1 = parsed as a C{date}
  • 2 = parsed as a C{time}
  • 3 = parsed as a C{datetime}

A few words on strptime:

strptime won't be able to understand "midnight", but you can replace it with an actual hour, using something like this:

def fix_dt(raw_date):
    """Replace 'midnight', 'noon', etc."""
    return raw_date.replace('midnight', '0').replace('noon', '12')

def parse_dt(raw_date):
    """Parse the fuzzy timestamps."""
    return datetime.datetime.strptime(fix_dt(raw_date), '%B %d, %Y, %H')

Then:

>>> parse_dt('July 1, 2013, midnight')
datetime.datetime(2013, 7, 1, 0, 0)

You can play on strfti.me to see which one will match your format.

You should check out this other question. The answers suggest using parsedatetime and pyparsing to parse fuzzy timestamps like the one in your example. Also check this pyparsing wiki page.

Community
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Attila O.
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0

You could also just combine the date withe datetime's start time:

from datetime import datetime, date
dt = date.today()
print(datetime.combine(dt, datetime.min.time()))
Josh
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