Why is datetime.strptime not working in this simple example?

Question

I'm using strptime to convert a date string into a datetime. According to the linked page, formatting like this should work:

>>> # Using datetime.strptime()
>>> dt = datetime.strptime("21/11/06 16:30", "%d/%m/%y %H:%M")

My code is:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.strptime(sDate,"%m/%d/%Y")

where sDate = "07/27/2012". (I understand, from the same page, that %Y is "Year with century as a decimal number.")

I have tried putting the actual value of sDate into the code:

dtDate = datetime.strptime("07/27/2012","%m/%d/%Y")

but this does not work. The error I get is:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'strptime'

What am I doing wrong?

Solution 1

You should be using datetime.datetime.strptime. Note that very old versions of Python (2.4 and older) don't have datetime.datetime.strptime; use time.strptime in that case.

Solution 2

You are importing the module datetime, which doesn't have a strptime function.

That module does have a datetime object with that method though:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")

Alternatively you can import the datetime object from the module:

from datetime import datetime
dtDate = datetime.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")

Note that the strptime method was added in python 2.5; if you are using an older version use the following code instead:

import datetime, time
dtDate = datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(sDate, "%m/%d/%Y")[:6])

Solution 3

Because datetime is the module. The class is datetime.datetime.

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime(sDate,"%m/%d/%Y")

Solution 4

You should use strftime static method from datetime class from datetime module. Try:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.datetime.strptime("07/27/2012", "%m/%d/%Y")

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Comments

[Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE]

Thanks, but then I get: AttributeError: type object 'datetime.datetime' has no attribute 'strptime'

[Martijn Pieters]

@Wikis: do you have another module named datetime in your project?

[Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE]

No. datetime is used in another place: now = datetime.datetime.now() if that's any help.

[Martijn Pieters]

@Wikis: are you using a python version before 2.5, by any chance?

[Anand]

In relation to the same question I am trying to do something like this - dt = datetime.datetime.strptime("2016-01-12T03:16:10.815675+00:00‌​", utc) <br> Ofcourse it is not working but just wondering is there a way to do it. I get a utc string and want to convert it to datetime object. Is there a simple way to do it?