How to convert a string to a particular date format in Python

Question

I am reading a csv into a dataframe and trying to format data from a date column. The value for that column is showing as: "2/1/2021 0:00:00" as a class 'str'. I want to convert it to an actual datetime type formatted like this:

 date_obj1 = datetime.datetime.strptime(p_date, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S")

but I am getting an error saying ValueError: time data '2/1/2021 0:00:00' does not match format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S' What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

Any character not preceded by a % symbol in your format string means that it will be matched as-is. In your current format string, these characters are - , T and : . For instance, your current format string of %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S successfully imports 2021-02-01T00:00:00 as a datetime object.

A format string that works with your specified data format is %m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S .

See thedocumentation for more information.