Convert Datetime Object to a String of Date Only in Python

Convert datetime object to a String of date only in Python

You can use strftime to help you format your date.

E.g.,

import datetime
t = datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 23, 0, 0)
t.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

will yield:

'02/23/2012'

More information about formatting see here

Converting date to string in Python

Use the strftime() function of the datetime object:

import datetime 

now = datetime.datetime.now()
date_string = now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
print(date_string)

Output

'2016-01-26'

How do I convert a datetime to date?

Use the date() method:

datetime.datetime.now().date()

Getting today's date in YYYY-MM-DD in Python?

Use strftime:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2021-01-26'

To also include a zero-padded Hour:Minute:Second at the end:

>>> datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
'2021-01-26 16:50:03'

Python how to convert datetime.date to the YYYY-MM-DD?

Just put that into the str(...) function:

import datetime
my_date = datetime.date(2022, 6, 7)
print(str(my_date))  # prints 2022-06-07

Technically, you can just print it and not make it a string first. But putting it in str means that instead of printing it, you could save that string to a variable.

If you need more advanced formatting options, then you can do what @FObersteiner suggested. But the format you want happens to be the default, so this will do if you just want that one format

Display Python datetime without time

print then.date()

What you want is a datetime.date object. What you have is a datetime.datetime object. You can either change the object when you print as per above, or do the following when creating the object:

then = datetime.datetime.strptime(when, '%Y-%m-%d').date()

How to convert datetime to integer in python

It depends on what the integer is supposed to encode. You could convert the date to a number of milliseconds from some previous time. People often do this affixed to 12:00 am January 1 1970, or 1900, etc., and measure time as an integer number of milliseconds from that point. The datetime module (or others like it) will have functions that do this for you: for example, you can use int(datetime.datetime.utcnow().timestamp()).

If you want to semantically encode the year, month, and day, one way to do it is to multiply those components by order-of-magnitude values large enough to juxtapose them within the integer digits:

2012-06-13 --> 20120613 = 10,000 * (2012) + 100 * (6) + 1*(13)

def to_integer(dt_time):
    return 10000*dt_time.year + 100*dt_time.month + dt_time.day

E.g.

In [1]: import datetime

In [2]: %cpaste
Pasting code; enter '--' alone on the line to stop or use Ctrl-D.
:def to_integer(dt_time):
:    return 10000*dt_time.year + 100*dt_time.month + dt_time.day
:    # Or take the appropriate chars from a string date representation.
:--

In [3]: to_integer(datetime.date(2012, 6, 13))
Out[3]: 20120613

If you also want minutes and seconds, then just include further orders of magnitude as needed to display the digits.

I've encountered this second method very often in legacy systems, especially systems that pull date-based data out of legacy SQL databases.

It is very bad. You end up writing a lot of hacky code for aligning dates, computing month or day offsets as they would appear in the integer format (e.g. resetting the month back to 1 as you pass December, then incrementing the year value), and boiler plate for converting to and from the integer format all over.

Unless such a convention lives in a deep, low-level, and thoroughly tested section of the API you're working on, such that everyone who ever consumes the data really can count on this integer representation and all of its helper functions, then you end up with lots of people re-writing basic date-handling routines all over the place.

It's generally much better to leave the value in a date context, like datetime.date, for as long as you possibly can, so that the operations upon it are expressed in a natural, date-based context, and not some lone developer's personal hack into an integer.

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