How to convert this date string into a datetime date object?

Question

I can't figure out why this date string throws an error when I try to convert it into a datetime object.

My date string is in the standard ISO-8601 format: u'2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000'

Apparent format based on Python's strptime documentation: '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z'

But for some reason, when I run:

test = datetime.strptime('2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z')

I get

ValueError: time data '2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000' does not match format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z'`

If you do that often and dislikes writing strptime expressions as I do, try http://labix.org/python-dateutil — Pedro Werneck, Nov 07 '13 at 22:15
Yep--definitely a duplicate. When I originally posted the question, I didn't realize it was in ISO 8601 format, so that question wasn't showing up when I searched. Feel free to close/merge or whatever is appropriate here. — Jeff Widman, Nov 07 '13 at 22:22

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 07 '13 at 22:05

2

%Z is the wrong directive here.

Try this

datetime.strptime('2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+%f')

More here

Demo:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.strptime('2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 325, in _strptime
    (data_string, format))
ValueError: time data '2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000' does not match format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z'
>>> datetime.strptime('2013-11-05T20:24:51+0000', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+%f')
datetime.datetime(2013, 11, 5, 20, 24, 51)

answered Nov 07 '13 at 22:05

karthikr

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Good catch that `%Z` is wrong. Although it's not `%f`--that's a totally different value, it should actually be `%z`. – Jeff Widman Nov 07 '13 at 22:09
@JeffWidman True, but `%z` gives: `ValueError: 'z' is a bad directive in format '%z'` – Robᵩ Nov 07 '13 at 22:10
Weird. According to the docs, %z should work... any idea why it doesn't? – Jeff Widman Nov 07 '13 at 22:12
@JeffWidman - Not a clue. – Robᵩ Nov 07 '13 at 22:13
1

Python's `datetime` unfortately only supports `%z` for representing dates, but not for parsing them. Found this out myself a while ago the hard way. – Lukas Graf Nov 07 '13 at 22:15
1

and it seems like it is fixed for > python3.2 – karthikr Nov 07 '13 at 22:15
Good to know. I think for <=2.7 `python-dateutil` is still the way to go. – Lukas Graf Nov 07 '13 at 22:17
1

`%f` is *milliseconds*, not a timezone offset. – Martijn Pieters Nov 07 '13 at 22:41
`%f` is the wrong directive. It might produce wrong result for values different from `+0000`. – jfs Nov 14 '13 at 00:20

How to convert this date string into a datetime date object?

1 Answers1