convert string date to date format

Question

This is a basic question but am getting tangled up

I have a string variable referencePeriodEndDate which contains a date with type string

Which I am trying to convert to a date only format

so '31/3/2017' to 2017-03-31

But am getting stuck. I've so far tried to use:

datetimeobject = datetime.strptime(referencePeriodEndDate,'%Y-%m-%d')
datetimeobject = referencePeriodEndDate.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

Possible duplicate of [Python date string to date object](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2803852/python-date-string-to-date-object) — Patrick Artner, Feb 01 '18 at 10:24
@Stacey the format tells `strptime` how the string comes in. A date has no format - it consists of numbers. Your input is '%d/%m/%Y'. As long as you tell `strptime` it will get "apples" but give it "bananas" (formatwise missmatched data) only fruitsalat (garbage) will come out. — Patrick Artner, Feb 01 '18 at 10:26
`datetime.strptime(...)` = parse a string to a datetime object. `datetime_object.strftime(...)` = format a datetime as string — Patrick Artner, Feb 01 '18 at 10:29
`print(datetime.datetime.strptime("31/3/2017", '%d/%m/%Y').strftime('%Y-%m-%d'))` — Abdul Niyas P M, Feb 01 '18 at 10:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 01 '18 at 10:31

2

if you can use the dateutil module

from dateutil import parser
dt =  parser.parse("31/3/2017")
print dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

Output:

2017-03-31

Using datetime

import datetime
A = datetime.datetime.strptime('31/3/2017','%d/%m/%Y')
print A.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

answered Feb 01 '18 at 10:31

Rakesh

Many thanks everyone, I didn't realize that strptime required an input format – Stacey Feb 01 '18 at 10:35

1 Answers1