How To Convert a String to a datetime or time Object in Python

By Pankaj and Andrea Anderson

The Python datetime and time modules both include a strptime() class method to convert strings to objects.

In this article, you’ll use strptime() to convert strings into datetime and struct_time() objects.

The syntax for the datetime.strptime() method is:

The datetime.strptime() method returns a datetime object that matches the date_string parsed by the format. Both arguments are required and must be strings.

For details about the format directives used in datetime.strptime(), refer to the strftime() and strptime() Format Codes in the Python documentation.

The following example converts a date and time string into a datetime.datetime() object, and prints the class name and value of the resulting object:

The output is:

The following example converts a date string into a datetime.date() object, and prints the class type and value of the resulting object:

The output is:

The following example converts a time string into a datetime.time() object, and prints the class type and value of the resulting object:

The output is:

The following example converts a German locale date string into a datetime.datetime() object, and prints the class type and value of the resulting object:

The output is:

Note that the resulting object doesn’t include the weekday name from the input string because a datetime.datetime() object includes the weekday only as a decimal number.

The syntax for the time.strptime() method is:

The time.strptime() method returns a time.struct_time() object that matches the time_string parsed by the format. The time_string is required and both arguments must be strings. If format is not provided, the default is:

This corresponds to the format returned by the ctime() function.

The format directives are the same for time.strptime() and time.strftime(). Learn more about the format directives for the time module in the Python documentation.

The following example converts a time string into a time.struct_time() object by providing the format argument, and prints the value of the resulting object:

The output is:

As shown in the output, when you convert a string into a time.struct_time() object, the strptime() method uses placeholder values for any format directives that aren’t defined in the format argument.

If you don’t provide a format argument when you convert a time string into a time.struct_time() object, then the default format is used and an error occurs if the input string does not exactly match the default format of:

The following example converts a time string into a time.struct_time() object with no format argument provided, and prints the value of the resulting object:

The output is:

As shown in the output, when you convert a string into a time.struct_time() object, the strptime() method uses placeholder values for any format directives that aren’t defined in the format argument or by the default format if no format is provided.

If the input string can’t be parsed by strptime() using the provided format, then a ValueError is raised. You can use the try block to test for parsing errors, along with the except block to print the results. The ValueError messages that you get when you use the strptime() method clearly explain the root causes of the parsing errors. The following example demonstrates some common errors, such as extra data and a format mismatch:

The output is:

In this tutorial, you converted date and time strings into datetime and time objects using Python. Continue your learning with more Python tutorials.

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Technical Editor

Hi Pankaj there is no other way to handle this exception if take off try and except time_str = ‘99::55::26’ try: time_object = time.strptime(time_str, ‘%H::%M::%S’) except ValueError as e: print(‘ValueError:’, e)

- Mpoyi Tshibuyi Frank

“%w Weekday as a decimal number, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday. – 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6” That’s incorrect, Sunday is 6 and Saturday is 5.

- Aaron Smyth

Lucid presentation. Nice blog

- Ganesh

I am looping over my dataframe where df[‘date’] has the format ‘yyyy-mm-dd’. However, python says the format does not match the data. nt = len(df[‘date’]) for it in range(nt): df[‘date’] = datetime.datetime.strptime(df[‘date’][it], ‘%Y-%m-%d’).date() This is the error I get: ValueError: time data ‘[yyyy-mm-dd]’ does not match format ‘[%Y-%m-%d]’ Can anyone help me?

- joost

Excellent and informative documentation. Thank you.

- Edwin

Hello Sir, How can we convert Tue AUG 11 02:30:18 UTC 2020? I tried from datetime import datetime datetime_object =“” datetime_str = “Tue Aug 11 01:40:27 UTC 2020” try: datetime_object = datetime.strptime(datetime_str, ‘%A %B %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y’) print(type(datetime_object)) print(datetime_object) except ValueError as ve: print(‘ValueError Raised:’, ve) But it is not working.Can you please help?

- Tiny Jimmy

Very crisp and informative.Try more like this.

- Yogesh

in string to datetime code line no 5 datetime_object = datetime.strptime(datetime_str, ‘%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S’) must be datetime_object = datetime.datetime.strptime(datetime_str, ‘%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S’) 1. datetime itself a module which have no strptime attribute. 2. %y must be %Y. A format is a format which cannot be changed.

- Keshav wadhwa

There is a mistake in this article. The ‘y’ in ‘%m/%d/%y’ will be capital. so the format will be ‘%m/%d/%Y’ i faced this problem this is the mistak in this article

- new

Hello, Can you please let me know, how to compare 2 dates with $gte and $lte using python and mongodb ?

- RB