How do I parse an ISO 8601-formatted date?

Note in Python 2.6+ and Py3K, the %f character catches microseconds.

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime("2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z", "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ")

See issue here

Try the iso8601 module; it does exactly this.

There are several other options mentioned on the WorkingWithTime page on the python.org wiki.

Starting from Python 3.7, strptime supports colon delimiters in UTC offsets (source). So you can then use:

import datetime
datetime.datetime.strptime('2018-01-31T09:24:31.488670+00:00', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z')

EDIT:

As pointed out by Martijn, if you created the datetime object using isoformat(), you can simply use datetime.fromisoformat().

What is the exact error you get? Is it like the following?

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime("2008-08-12T12:20:30.656234Z", "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.Z")
ValueError: time data did not match format:  data=2008-08-12T12:20:30.656234Z  fmt=%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.Z

If yes, you can split your input string on ".", and then add the microseconds to the datetime you got.

Try this:

>>> def gt(dt_str):
        dt, _, us= dt_str.partition(".")
        dt= datetime.datetime.strptime(dt, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S")
        us= int(us.rstrip("Z"), 10)
        return dt + datetime.timedelta(microseconds=us)

>>> gt("2008-08-12T12:20:30.656234Z")
datetime.datetime(2008, 8, 12, 12, 20, 30, 656234)

A simple option from one of the comments: replace 'Z' with '+00:00' - and use Python 3.7+'s fromisoformat:

from datetime import datetime

s = "2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z"

datetime.fromisoformat(s.replace('Z', '+00:00'))
# datetime.datetime(2008, 9, 3, 20, 56, 35, 450686, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

Although strptime can parse the 'Z' character to UTC, fromisoformat is faster by ~ x40 (see also: A faster strptime):

%timeit datetime.fromisoformat(s.replace('Z', '+00:00'))
388 ns ± 48.3 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

%timeit dateutil.parser.isoparse(s)
11 µs ± 1.05 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)

%timeit datetime.strptime(s, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z')
15.8 µs ± 1.32 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)

%timeit dateutil.parser.parse(s)
87.8 µs ± 8.54 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000 loops each)

(Python 3.9.12 x64 on Windows 10)

import re
import datetime
s = "2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z"
d = datetime.datetime(*map(int, re.split(r'[^\d]', s)[:-1]))

I'm the author of iso8601utils. It can be found on GitHub or on PyPI. Here's how you can parse your example:

>>> from iso8601utils import parsers
>>> parsers.datetime('2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z')
datetime.datetime(2008, 9, 3, 20, 56, 35, 450686)

An another way is to use specialized parser for ISO-8601 is to use isoparse function of dateutil parser:

from dateutil import parser

date = parser.isoparse("2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686+01:00")
print(date)

Output:

2008-09-03 20:56:35.450686+01:00

This function is also mentioned in the documentation for the standard Python function datetime.fromisoformat:

A more full-featured ISO 8601 parser, dateutil.parser.isoparse is available in the third-party package dateutil.

If pandas is used anyway, I can recommend Timestamp from pandas. There you can

ts_1 = pd.Timestamp('2020-02-18T04:27:58.000Z')    
ts_2 = pd.Timestamp('2020-02-18T04:27:58.000')

Rant: It is just unbelievable that we still need to worry about things like date string parsing in 2021.

Nowadays there's Maya: Datetimes for Humans™, from the author of the popular Requests: HTTP for Humans™ package:

>>> import maya
>>> str = '2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z'
>>> maya.MayaDT.from_rfc3339(str).datetime()
datetime.datetime(2008, 9, 3, 20, 56, 35, 450686, tzinfo=<UTC>)

Initially I tried with:

from operator import neg, pos
from time import strptime, mktime
from datetime import datetime, tzinfo, timedelta

class MyUTCOffsetTimezone(tzinfo):
    @staticmethod
    def with_offset(offset_no_signal, signal):  # type: (str, str) -> MyUTCOffsetTimezone
        return MyUTCOffsetTimezone((pos if signal == '+' else neg)(
            (datetime.strptime(offset_no_signal, '%H:%M') - datetime(1900, 1, 1))
          .total_seconds()))

    def __init__(self, offset, name=None):
        self.offset = timedelta(seconds=offset)
        self.name = name or self.__class__.__name__

    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return self.offset

    def tzname(self, dt):
        return self.name

    def dst(self, dt):
        return timedelta(0)


def to_datetime_tz(dt):  # type: (str) -> datetime
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f'
    if dt[-6] in frozenset(('+', '-')):
        dt, sign, offset = strptime(dt[:-6], fmt), dt[-6], dt[-5:]
        return datetime.fromtimestamp(mktime(dt),
                                      tz=MyUTCOffsetTimezone.with_offset(offset, sign))
    elif dt[-1] == 'Z':
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + 'Z')
    return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt)

But that didn't work on negative timezones. This however I got working fine, in Python 3.7.3:

from datetime import datetime


def to_datetime_tz(dt):  # type: (str) -> datetime
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f'
    if dt[-6] in frozenset(('+', '-')):
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + '%z')
    elif dt[-1] == 'Z':
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + 'Z')
    return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt)

Some tests, note that the out only differs by precision of microseconds. Got to 6 digits of precision on my machine, but YMMV:

for dt_in, dt_out in (
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000Z', '2019-03-11T08:00:00'),
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000+11:00', '2019-03-11T08:00:00+11:00'),
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000-11:00', '2019-03-11T08:00:00-11:00')
    ):
    isoformat = to_datetime_tz(dt_in).isoformat()
    assert isoformat == dt_out, '{} != {}'.format(isoformat, dt_out)