python datetime localization

Question

What do I need to do (modules to load, locale methods to invoke, etc.) so that when I call:

datetime.date(2009,1,16).strftime("%A %Y-%b-%d")

instead of getting:

Out[20]: 'Friday 2009-Jan-16'

i get spanish/french/german/... output

Out[20]: 'Viernes 2009-Ene-16'

without having to change my whole operating system's locale (i.e. just use python calls to dynamically set the locale and keep the changes scoped within my app)

Thanks.

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 19 '10 at 03:28

8

locale.setlocale()

answered Jan 19 '10 at 03:28

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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sorry for the basic question, but how do you set it? 'spanish' in locale.locale_alias.keys() True locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'spanish') Error: unsupported locale setting – jd. Jan 19 '10 at 03:36
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`locale.setlocale(local.LC_TIME, 'es_ES')` – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 19 '10 at 03:37
tried locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'es_ES') and still get Error: unsupported locale setting – jd. Jan 19 '10 at 03:43
Then for some reason your operating system's locale entries are missing. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 19 '10 at 03:45
That's a hardcoded mapping; it doesn't look at your OS to figure out what it knows about. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 19 '10 at 03:48
got it; thanks for your help; will try to figure out my ubuntu's locale settings and follow up on this thread – jd. Jan 19 '10 at 03:54
5

sudo locale-gen es_ES.UTF-8 did the trick; now your answer worked; thanks. – jd. Jan 19 '10 at 04:01
@jd.: note: [`es_ES.UTF-8` doesn't support am/pm on my system](http://stackoverflow.com/a/23201158/4279) – jfs Apr 21 '14 at 16:13
I am using Debian and "locale-gen es_ES.UTF-8" didn't work. I added the spanish local via "sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales" as shown [here](https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Table_of_locales) – Abraham Simpson Jul 08 '20 at 12:13

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 28 '16 at 09:20

6

On Ubuntu,

$> sudo locale-gen es_ES.UTF-8
$> sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
$> python
>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'es_ES.UTF-8')

answered Mar 28 '16 at 09:20

e18r

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score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 19 '10 at 08:09

4

Also, have a look at the babel project.

answered Jan 19 '10 at 08:09

codeape

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 19 '10 at 03:31

2

After setting your locale (with locale.setlocale) You can use the locale modules' nl_langinfo method like so:

time.strftime(locale.nl_langinfo(locale.D_T_FMT), time.localtime())

answered Jan 19 '10 at 03:31

Kyle Lutz

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python datetime localization

4 Answers4

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