How to remove : after a + or - in python

Question

i have a timestamp that looks like this 2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+01:00. I would like to parse it to datetime. I have the idea that i can use %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z as representation of this.

But the problem is the colon in the timezone. How can i remove the colon in the Timezone or is there a better way as the %z?

`s.rsplit(':', 1)[0]` would be everything up to the last colon. — jonrsharpe, Nov 06 '15 at 13:28
`%z` (lower case) is the representation for timezone in +/- HHMM format. — Daniel Roseman, Nov 06 '15 at 13:34
SirParselot: If the User has no timezone set in the api the timezone is missing. DanielRoseman: i have no test system and on the python doc website it's mention in another way. https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior — FrankStein, Nov 06 '15 at 13:37

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:29

2

You have an ISO 8601 datetime string. Don't bother parsing it or fiddling with it by hand (see: XY Problem). Use the iso8601 library for Python.

import iso8601
parsed = iso8601.parse_date("2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+01:00")

If you want to remove the timezone information from it, use the replace method.

tz_stripped = parsed.replace(tzinfo=None)

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:29

Community

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answered Nov 06 '15 at 13:46

Tom Morris

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do you know if `iso8601` is in the default python? – FrankStein Nov 06 '15 at 13:54
No, you need to install it from PyPI. – Tom Morris Nov 06 '15 at 14:28
ok, thank you. I have copied the File in the same folder and it works. So i do not need to install. – FrankStein Nov 06 '15 at 14:31

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 06 '15 at 13:45

import re
original = '2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+01:00'
replaced = re.sub(r'([+-]\d+):(\d+)$', r'\1\2', original)
# replaced == '2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+0100'

This will replace the colon only when it is preceded by a plus or minus, and surrounded by digits until the end of the string.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 06 '15 at 14:06

I think the best way to do this is with dateutils https://labix.org/python-dateutil

from dateutil.parser import parse
original = '2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+01:00'
print "Original Date {}".format(original)
new_date =  parse(original)
print new_date
print type(new_date)
# print new_date.hour
# print new_date.minute
# print new_date.second
print "New Date 1 {}".format(new_date.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
print "New Date 2 {}".format(new_date.strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z'))

Output:

Original Date 2015-11-06T14:20:14.011+01:00
2015-11-06 14:20:14.011000+01:00
<type 'datetime.datetime'>
New Date 1 2015-11-06 14:20:14
New Date 2 2015-11-06T14:20:14.011000+0100

Regards

How to remove : after a + or - in python

3 Answers3