Python format value as a valid date

Question

suppose I have a report that has the following name:

"REPORT NAME 0331", where 0331 refers to March 31th, 2020.

I was able to extract the 0331 through slicing:

name[-4:]

But I would like to now format 0331 into a valid date (ie, that I can then use to compare vs the date of another report, and determine which report is older).

EDIT: The format should be "2020-MM-DD"

How would that work?

Answer 1

The following code should work for what you described.

import datetime from datetime

month_date = '%m%d'
raw_value = '0331'

date = datetime.strptime(month_day_format, raw_value)
date = date.replace(year=2020)

report_date = date.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

The report_date captures the formatted date string.

Useful links to the datatime functions used:

• strptime - https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime.datetime.strptime
• strftime - https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime.date.strftime
• replace - https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime.datetime.replace

Answer 2

You could use datetime.strptime() , eg:

datetime.datetime.strptime('0331', '%m%d')
# datetime.datetime(1900, 3, 31, 0, 0)

and then you can use the datetime object as detailed in the documentation .

Answer 3

try this one:

d = name[-4:]
res = datetime(2020, int(d[:2]),int(d[2:]))