Python - convert string type to datetime type

user_8558929 0
Viewed 12946

I have a two variables that i want to compare. When printed, this is what they look like:

2020-05-20 13:01:30
2020-05-20 14:49:03

However, one is a string type, and the other a datetime type. If I want to convert the string one into date type so I can compare them, is the only way to use strptime? Because this seems a little redundant to me, since the string already has the exact format I want it to have. Basically, is there a function that does the same as strptime, but without re-formating it? As you can imagine, googling this problem is impossible, as all I'm getting is people trying to format any kind of string into datetime, so all the answers are just pointing at strptime.

datetime python
2 Answers

You can use parser provided by dateutil

from dateutil import parser

date_object = parser.parse("2020-05-20 13:01:30")

print(repr(date_object))
# datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 20, 13, 1, 30)

print(type(date_object)) 
# <class 'datetime.datetime'>

print(date_object)  
# 2020-05-20 13:01:30

From the docs:

This module offers a generic date/time string parser which is able to parse most known formats to represent a date and/or time.

Documentation: https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/parser.html

user_64608560

If you work with Python 3.7+, for ISO 8601 compatible strings, use datetime.fromisoformat() as this is considerably more efficient than strptime or dateutil's parser. Ex:

from datetime import datetime
dtobj = datetime.fromisoformat('2020-05-20 13:01:30')
print(repr(dtobj))
# datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 20, 13, 1, 30)

You can find a benchmark vs. strptime etc. here or here.

user_101974180
Related