converting json date format from string to datetime format in python

Question

currently im trying to convert an incoming JSON data with a time stamp in string format to a datetime in python.

the following data of the string is this:

2022-12-30T16:27:56.9871548+08:00

I tried to convert this string to datetime using strptime and when i tried doing this below:

from datetime import datetime

date = datetime.strptime('2022-12-30T16:27:56.9871548+08:00', '%y-%M-%dT%H:%m:%S.%f%z')

the error gave me this

ValueError: time data '2022-12-30T16:27:56.9871548+08:00' does not match format '%y-%M-%dT%H:%m:%S.%f%z'

how can i fix this??

Asked By: Edwin Choy

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Source

Answer 1

The format code used has a number of errors. Corrected would be %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z (year/month/minute were wrong case) but note that %f only supports microseconds (6 digits after the decimal) and your example has 7.

This format has a special function in datetime that supports it called .fromisoformat(), but before Python 3.11 it only supported 6 digits as well. Here’s a workaround:

#!python3.10
import datetime as dt
import re

s = '2022-12-30T16:27:56.9871548+08:00'
# replace more than 6 digits in a row with exactly the first 6 digits.
print(dt.datetime.fromisoformat(re.sub(r'(d{6})d+', r'1', s)))
# 2022-12-30 16:27:56.987154+08:00

As of Python 3.11:

#!python3.11
import datetime as dt
import re

s = '2022-12-30T16:27:56.9871548+08:00'
print(dt.datetime.fromisoformat(s))
# 2022-12-30 16:27:56.987154+08:00

Note that in both cases precision is lost and only microseconds are retained.

Answered By: Mark Tolonen

converting json date format from string to datetime format in python

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