change date format mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM to yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss format using python

Question

I am new to python and trying to import data from csv file to mysql table. the only issue is all data except datetime is not importing. I am getting all nulls in the datefield, I dont know where i am going wrong.

for row in reader:
    print row
    try:
        (location_id, vrm, start_datetime,end_datetime,ticket_price,crap) = [x.decode('utf-8-sig') for x in row]
    except:
        print "Error with row: " % row
        #sys.exit(3)

    tmp = start_datetime.split(" ")
    start_date = tmp[0]
    start_time = tmp[1]

    tmp = end_datetime.split(" ")
    end_date = tmp[0]
    end_time = tmp[1]

    vrm = vrm.replace(' ', '')
    vrm = vrm.upper()

    tmp = start_date.split('/')
    tmp = end_date.split('/')

    SessionCost = float(ticket_price)/ 100

    iso_date = "%s-%s-%s" %(tmp[0],tmp[1],tmp[2])
    entryDatetime = "%s " % iso_date
    expiryDatetime = "%s " % iso_date
    sql_local = """INSERT INTO customer_1.pay_and_display
        (plate, machine_id, ticket_datetime, expiry_datetime, ticket_name, ticket_price)
        VALUES ("%s", "%s", "%s", "%s", "%s", "%s") """ % (vrm, location_id, start_datetime, 
        end_datetime, "IPSWL",SessionCost)
    print sql_local
    cursor.execute(sql_local)

Answer 1

You could use strptime

import datetime

dt = datetime.datetime.strptime("01/23/2021 04:12:56 AM", '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %p')

print(dt) #2021-01-23 04:12:56

If your date is using a 12 hour clock, change %H to %I

Also note that dt in this example is a date object. Printing it calls it's __str__ (or maybe __repr__ ) method. To use it in your SQL you will probably have to do this str(dt) .

Here is a link to information on the various format characters and their meaning.

Answer 2

If a program I'm working on uses date or time I like to copy and paste this simple block of code. The 'time' variable is a datetime object for the present moment, the 'dtRn' variable makes it easy to display a single string containing datetime. Link to W3Schools Python Datetime Options

import datetime
from time import strftime, strptime

time = datetime.datetime.now()
dtRn = str(strftime("%x") + " " + strftime("%X"))

If you're interested in how long it takes to run a program (start to finish); add a variant of this block of code to the end of the script, and subtract the end time from the start time.