Specify date format for Python argparse input arguments

Question

I have a Python script that requires some command line inputs and I am using argparse for parsing them. I found the documentation a bit confusing and couldn’t find a way to check for a format in the input parameters. What I mean by checking format is explained with this example script:

parser.add_argument('-s', "--startdate", help="The Start Date - format YYYY-MM-DD ", required=True)
parser.add_argument('-e', "--enddate", help="The End Date format YYYY-MM-DD (Inclusive)", required=True)
parser.add_argument('-a', "--accountid", type=int, help='Account ID for the account for which data is required (Default: 570)')
parser.add_argument('-o', "--outputpath", help='Directory where output needs to be stored (Default: ' + os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

I need to check for option -s and -e that the input by the user is in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Is there an option in argparse that I do not know of which accomplishes this?

Asked By: Sohaib

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Source

Answer 1

Per the documentation:

The type keyword argument of add_argument() allows any necessary type-checking and type conversions to be performed … The argument to type can be any callable that accepts a single string.

You could do something like:

def valid_date(s):
    try:
        return datetime.strptime(s, "%Y-%m-%d")
    except ValueError:
        msg = "not a valid date: {0!r}".format(s)
        raise argparse.ArgumentTypeError(msg)

Then use that as type:

parser.add_argument(
    "-s", 
    "--startdate", 
    help="The Start Date - format YYYY-MM-DD", 
    required=True, 
    type=valid_date
)

Answered By: jonrsharpe

Answer 2

Just to add on to the answer above, you can use a lambda function if you want to keep it to a one-liner. For example:

parser.add_argument('--date', type=lambda d: datetime.strptime(d, '%Y%m%d'))

Old thread but the question was still relevant for me at least!

Answered By: Evan V

Answer 3

For others who hit this via search engines: in Python 3.7, you can use the standard .fromisoformat class method instead of reinventing the wheel for ISO-8601 compliant dates, e.g.:

import datetime

parser.add_argument('-s', "--startdate",
    help="The Start Date - format YYYY-MM-DD",
    required=True,
    type=datetime.date.fromisoformat)
parser.add_argument('-e', "--enddate",
    help="The End Date format YYYY-MM-DD (Inclusive)",
    required=True,
    type=datetime.date.fromisoformat)

Answered By: Michał Górny

Specify date format for Python argparse input arguments

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