Converting string in hours and minutes to datetime

Question

I am given a list of time in military hours and minutes as a string. Naturally, I need to convert each string into a datetime object using the strptime class with the %H for military or 24-hour clock and %M for minutes. However, anytime I try to parse it I am getting an output for year,month,day hour.minute.seconds for no reason

ie.

from datetime import datetime
string_time = '18:00'
formatted_time = datetime.strptime(string_time, '%H:%M')

print(formatted_time)

output:

1900-01-01 18:00:00

Just this morning when I was working on the assignment it printed perfectly fine but out of nowhere I started getting this weird output. Nowhere in my directory or current file did I ever try to format a year-month-day time. I did however try to create an empty datetime object but scrapped it after figuring out you can't have an empty datetime object.

So your desired output is equal to the input? Why do you use `strptime` then? Just use the input as it is? — mkrieger1, Jan 02 '22 at 21:05
@mkrieger1 Because I need it as a datetime object. I am given 2 calenders along with duration and constraint where duration is length of meeting and constraint is when meetings can take place. I need to return a list of all possible meetings that I can schedule between the two calenders. — swordlordswamplord, Jan 02 '22 at 21:10
i mean im almost certain i can solve it without having to use datetime but i think it would be ugly and much longer time complexity — swordlordswamplord, Jan 02 '22 at 21:13
Okay. In any case, your question has been answered here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2265357/parse-date-string-and-change-format — mkrieger1, Jan 02 '22 at 21:15
wait actually. this did not solve my question.. it reverts back to a strng.. I need it as a datetime... back to square one — swordlordswamplord, Jan 02 '22 at 21:16
Use strptime to convert a string to a datetime, do any calculations with it, and then use strftime to convert it to a string in the desired format. — mkrieger1, Jan 02 '22 at 21:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 02 '22 at 22:04

Explanation

A datetime object, as its name implies, contains a date and a time. The reason your datetime object has a date 1900-01-01 even though you only specify the time is because the date of the datetime object cannot be empty (1900-01-01 is the default date when no date is provided).

Solution

If you don't need to handle the "date", simply ignore the date part of your datetime object. If you need to print out the time, do yourDateTimeObject.strftime('%H:%M').

Converting string in hours and minutes to datetime

1 Answers1

Explanation

Solution