Sometimes, we want to parse a date string and change its format with Python.
In this article, we’ll look at how to parse a date string and change its format with Python.
How to parse a date string and change its format with Python?
To parse a date string and change its format with Python, we can use the datetime.datetime.striptime method to parse a date string into a date object.
And then we call strftime to convert the date object back to a string.
For instance, we write:
import datetime
d = datetime.datetime.strptime('Mon Feb 15 2020',
'%a %b %d %Y').strftime('%d/%m/%Y')
print(d)
We call datetime.datetime.strptime with the date string and the format string of the date respectively.
%a is the abbreviation of the day of the week.
%b is the abbreviation of the month.
%d is the day of the month.
And %Y is the year.
We then call strftime to return a date string with the format we want.
%m is the 2 digit month.
Therefore, d is '15/02/2020'.
Conclusion
To parse a date string and change its format with Python, we can use the datetime.datetime.striptime method to parse a date string into a date object.
And then we call strftime to convert the date object back to a string.
