how to convert a datetime string back to datetime object?

Question

I am storing a datetime string in a database. Now I face a problem. When I fetch the string from the database, I need to convert it back to a datetime object...

Any easy way to do that?

The string of datetime looks like:

2010-11-13 10:33:54.227806

duplicate of [How do I parse an ISO 8601-formatted date?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/127803/10197418) — FObersteiner, Jun 10 '23 at 13:40

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 13 '10 at 02:48

You want datetime.strptime(date_string, format).

from datetime import datetime
datetime.strptime("2010-11-13 10:33:54.227806", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f")

For details on the format string, see http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 10 '23 at 13:37

6

I sugggest you install python-dateutil with pip install python-dateutil:

from dateutil import parser
d = parser.parse(yourstring)

This library gets a datetime object from your date string in a 'smart' way...

edited Jun 10 '23 at 13:37

Michael M.

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answered Nov 13 '10 at 02:55

diegueus9

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Depends on your definition of smart. It tries to guess the format of your date string, and its guess might be wrong. – Pieter May 09 '17 at 13:07

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 04 '12 at 05:59

# time tuple to datetime object
    time_tuple = (2008, 11, 12, 13, 51, 18, 2, 317, 0)
    dt_obj = datetime(*time_tuple[0:6])
    print repr(dt_obj)

# date string to datetime object
    date_str = "2008-11-10 17:53:59"
    dt_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
    print repr(dt_obj)

# timestamp to datetime object in local time
    timestamp = 1226527167.595983
    dt_obj = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
    print repr(dt_obj)

how to convert a datetime string back to datetime object?

3 Answers3