Formatting DateTime objects
Sometimes we need to print our datetime objects in different formats. For these operations, we are going to use strftime() method. The syntax of strftime() is:
Syntax : strftime(format)
Python
# importing datetime objectimport datetime# initialising datetime objectobj = datetime.datetime(2001, 12, 9)# Example 1print(obj.strftime("%a %m %y"))# Example 2print(obj.strftime("%m-%d-%Y %T:%M%p")) |
Output:
Sun 12 01 12-09-2001 00:00:00:00AM
We can get different attributes of the datetime object. In the code below, we are going to get the hours, minutes, and seconds.
Python
# importing datetime objectimport datetime# initialising datetime objectobj = datetime.datetime(2001, 12, 9, 12, 11, 23)# Hoursprint(obj.hour)# Minutesprint(obj.minute)# Secondsprint(obj.second) |
Output:
12 11 23
We can also get a datetime object using the strptime() method, in which we get a DateTime object from a string. Since the strings we use can be formatted in any form, we need to specify the expected format. To understand this, let’s look at the syntax of strptime():
Syntax : datetime.strptime(data,expected_format)
Parameters :
- data : Our time and date passed as a string in a particular format
- expected_format : the format in which data is presented in the first parameter
Python
# importing datetime objectimport datetime# using strptime() methodprint(datetime.datetime.strptime("Jan 1, 2013 12:30 PM", "%b %d, %Y %I:%M %p")) |
Output:
2013-01-01 12:30:00
Working with Datetime Objects and Timezones in Python
In this article, we are going to work with Datetime objects and learn about their behavior when Time zones are introduced. We are going to be working with the Python datetime module.