Convert string to DateTime and vice-versa in Python

Python has extensive date and time manipulation capabilities. In this article, we'll see how a string with proper format can be converted to a datetime object and vice versa.

Converting String to DateTime with strptime()

The strptime() function from the datetime module can convert a string to datetime by taking appropriate format specifiers ?

import datetime

dt_str = 'September 19 2019 21:02:23 PM'

# Given date time string
print("Given date time:", dt_str)
print("Data Type:", type(dt_str))

# Define format specifiers
dtformat = '%B %d %Y %H:%M:%S %p'

# Convert string to datetime
datetime_val = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt_str, dtformat)
print("After converting to datetime:", datetime_val)
print("Data type:", type(datetime_val))

Given date time: September 19 2019 21:02:23 PM
Data Type: <class 'str'>
After converting to datetime: 2019-09-19 21:02:23
Data type: <class 'datetime.datetime'>

Converting DateTime to String with str()

The str() function converts its parameter to a string. Here we take a datetime value using datetime.today() and convert it to string ?

import datetime

# Get current datetime
current_dt = datetime.datetime.today()
print("Date time data type:", current_dt)
print("Data type:", type(current_dt))

# Convert datetime to string
dtstr = str(current_dt)
print("String Date time:", dtstr)
print("Data type:", type(dtstr))

Date time data type: 2020-05-18 11:09:40.986027
Data type: <class 'datetime.datetime'>
String Date time: 2020-05-18 11:09:40.986027
Data type: <class 'str'>

Converting DateTime to String with strftime()

For more control over the output format, use strftime() to format datetime objects as strings ?

import datetime

datetime_val = datetime.datetime(2019, 9, 19, 21, 2, 23)

# Convert to formatted string
formatted_str = datetime_val.strftime('%B %d, %Y at %I:%M %p')
print("Formatted string:", formatted_str)

# Different format
date_only = datetime_val.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
print("Date only:", date_only)

Formatted string: September 19, 2019 at 09:02 PM
Date only: 2019-09-19

Common Format Specifiers

Conclusion

Use strptime() to convert strings to datetime objects and strftime() for formatted datetime-to-string conversion. The str() function provides basic datetime-to-string conversion with default formatting.