Python - “TypeError: 'str' object is not callable”, when building a date format (from datetime)

Question

I don't understand why I get TypeError: 'str' object is not callable on a function I've built. Please, help? Explanation below...

I have a list of tuples:

date_list = [
 (0, '  Thursday - 18 February 2021'),
 (40, '  Friday - 19 February 2021'),
 (68, '  Saturday - 20 February 2021'),
 (129, '  Sunday - 21 February 2021'),
 (190, '  Monday - 22 February 2021'),
 (260, '  Tuesday - 23 February 2021'),
 (300, '  Wednesday - 24 February 2021'),
 (337, '  Thursday - 25 February 2021'),
 (377, '  Friday - 26 February 2021'),
 (402, '  Saturday - 27 February 2021'),
 (463, '  Sunday - 28 February 2021'),
 (524, '  Monday - 01 March 2021'),
 (591, '  Tuesday - 02 March 2021'),
 (631, '  Wednesday - 03 March 2021'),
 (668, '  Thursday - 04 March 2021')
]

Ignore the numbers at index 0 of each tuple, because they aren't part of the problem (for the curious, they represent the list index number of the element at index 1 of tuples, picked from another list).

Now, I have the following function:

def date_update(date_list):

    print("\ndate_update():")

    updated_dates = []

    # months dictionary, to swap word for number
    months = {"January": 1, "February": 2, "March": 3, "April": 4, "May": 5, "June": 6, "July": 7, "August": 8, "September": 9, "October": 10, "November": 11, "December": 12}

    # pattern for regex on day and year
    day_pattern = re.compile(r'(\d{2})')
    year_pattern = re.compile(r'(\d{4})')

    # extract day and year
    for true_index, date in date_list:
        day_extracts = int(re.search(day_pattern, date).group())
        year_extracts = int(re.search(year_pattern, date).group())

        # identify month
        for month in months:
            if month in date:
                month_extracts = int(months[month])
            else:
                pass
        
        date_format = date(year_extracts, month_extracts, day_extracts)
        
        return date_format

Can anyone see what's wrong?

Answer 1

You can simplify your code by removing regex and dict operations, if you use proper format to in datetime.strptime

from datetime import strptime

for idx, str_date in date_list:
    print(datetime.strptime(str_date.strip(), "%A - %d %B %Y"))

2021-02-18 00:00:00
2021-02-19 00:00:00
2021-02-20 00:00:00
2021-02-21 00:00:00
2021-02-22 00:00:00
2021-02-23 00:00:00
2021-02-24 00:00:00
2021-02-25 00:00:00
2021-02-26 00:00:00
2021-02-27 00:00:00
2021-02-28 00:00:00
2021-03-01 00:00:00
2021-03-02 00:00:00
2021-03-03 00:00:00
2021-03-04 00:00:00

Instead of printing the dates, you can simply store it in a list and use it when needed in your code.