How to Convert Python String to Date: A Complete Guide

Do you want to learn how to convert Python string to date? If yes, then you are in the right place. In this article, I will show you how to use the built-in datetime module to perform various operations on dates and times in Python. You will also learn how to format and parse date strings using different methods and techniques.

What is a Python String?

A Python string is a sequence of characters enclosed in single or double quotes. For example, "Hello" and 'World' are both valid Python strings. Strings are immutable, which means they cannot be changed once they are created. Strings can be concatenated, sliced, indexed, and iterated over using various operators and methods.

What is a Python Date?

A Python date is an object that represents a specific date (year, month, and day) in the Gregorian calendar. A date object can be created using the date class from the datetime module. For example, date(2023, 11, 19) creates a date object for November 19, 2023. Date objects are also immutable and support various attributes and methods to manipulate and compare dates.

How to Convert Python String to Date?

To convert a Python string to a date, you need to use the strptime method from the datetime module. The strptime method takes two arguments: a string representing a date and a format string that specifies how the date is formatted. The format string can contain various directives that match the components of the date string, such as %Y for the four-digit year, %m for the two-digit month, and %d for the two-digit day. The strptime method returns a datetime object that contains the date and time information parsed from the string.

For example, suppose you have a string "19/11/2023" that represents a date in the format of day/month/year. To convert this string to a date object, you can use the following code:

from datetime import datetime

date_string = "19/11/2023"
date_object = datetime.strptime(date_string, "%d/%m/%Y")
print(date_object)

The output of this code is:

2023-11-19 00:00:00

As you can see, the strptime method has converted the string "19/11/2023" to a datetime object with the date 2023-11-19 and the time 00:00:00. Note that the strptime method always returns a datetime object, even if the string only contains the date information. If you want to get a date object instead, you can use the date method of the datetime object. For example:

from datetime import datetime

date_string = "19/11/2023"
date_object = datetime.strptime(date_string, "%d/%m/%Y").date()
print(date_object)

The output of this code is:

2023-11-19

Now, the date_object is a date object with the date 2023-11-19.

How to Format Python Date to String?

To format a Python date to a string, you need to use the strftime method from the datetime module. The strftime method takes one argument: a format string that specifies how the date should be formatted. The format string can contain the same directives as the strptime method, such as %Y, %m, and %d. The strftime method returns a string that represents the date formatted according to the format string.

For example, suppose you have a date object date(2023, 11, 19) that represents November 19, 2023. To format this date to a string in the format of month/day/year, you can use the following code:

from datetime import date

date_object = date(2023, 11, 19)
date_string = date_object.strftime("%m/%d/%Y")
print(date_string)

The output of this code is:

11/19/2023

As you can see, the strftime method has formatted the date object date(2023, 11, 19) to a string "11/19/2023" in the format of month/day/year.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to convert Python string to date and vice versa using the datetime module. You have also learned how to use the strptime and strftime methods to parse and format date strings using different format strings. You can use these methods to work with dates and times in Python in various ways.

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