Python Tutorial: Turning dates into strings

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Python has a very flexible set of tools for turning dates back into strings to be easily read. We want to put dates back into strings when, for example, we want to print results, but also if we want to put dates into filenames, or if we want to write dates out to CSV or Excel files.

For example, let's create a date and see how Python prints it by default.

As before, we import date from datetime and let's again create an object for November 5th, 2017.

When we ask Python to print the date, it prints the year, day and then the month, separated by dashes, and always with two digits for the day and month. In the comment, you can see I've noted this as YYYY-MM-DD; four digit year, two digit month, and two digit day of the month. This default format is also known as ISO format, or ISO 8601 format, after the international standard ISO 8601 that it is based on.

ISO 8601 strings are always the same length since month and day are written with 0s when they are less than 10. We'll talk about another advantage of ISO 8601 in a moment.

If we want the ISO representation of a date as a string, say to write it to a CSV file instead of just printing it, you can call the isoformat() method. In this example, we put it inside a list so you can see that it creates a string.

The ISO 8601 format has another nice advantage. To demonstrate, we've created a variable called some_dates and represented two dates here as strings: January 1, 2000, and December 31, 1999.

Dates formatted as ISO 8601 strings sort correctly. When we print the sorted version of this list, the earlier day is first, and the later date is second. For example, if we use ISO 8601 dates in filenames, they can be correctly sorted from earliest to latest. If we had month or day first, the strings would not sort in chronological order.

If you don't want to put dates in ISO 8601 format, Python has a flexible set of options for representing dates in other ways, using the strftime() method.

strftime() works by letting you pass a "format string" which Python uses to format your date. Let's see an example.

We again create an example date of January 5th, 2017. We then call strftime() on d, with the format string of % capital Y. Strftime reads the % capital Y and fills in the year in this string for us.

strftime() though is very flexible: we can give it arbitrary strings with % capital Y in them for the format string, and it will stick the year in. For example, we can use the format string of "Year is %Y".

Strftime has other placeholders besides %Y: % lowercase m gives the month, and % lowercase d gives the day of the month. Using these, we can represent dates in arbitrary formats for whatever our needs are.

In this lesson, we discussed how Python can represent a date as a string. We emphasized the importance and utility of ISO 8601 format, but also introduced strftime(), which lets you turn dates in a wide variety of strings depending on your needs.

#PythonTutorial #DataCamp #Dates #Python

[chandankumarsah]

Representing dates in different ways
date objects in Python have a great number of ways they can be printed out as strings. In some cases, you want to know the date in a clear, language-agnostic format. In other cases, you want something which can fit into a paragraph and flow naturally.
Let's try printing out the same date, August 26, 1992 (the day that Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida), in a number of different ways, to practice using the .strftime() method.
A date object called andrew has already been created.
Instructions 2/3
35 XP
Print andrew in the format 'YYYY-MM'.
2
Print andrew in the format 'MONTH (YYYY)', where MONTH is the full name (%B).
Representing dates in different ways
date objects in Python have a great number of ways they can be printed out as strings. In some cases, you want to know the date in a clear, language-agnostic format. In other cases, you want something which can fit into a paragraph and flow naturally.
Let's try printing out the same date, August 26, 1992 (the day that Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida), in a number of different ways, to practice using the .strftime() method.
A date object called andrew has already been created.
Instructions 2/3
35 XP
Print andrew in the format 'YYYY-MM'.
2
Print andrew in the format 'MONTH (YYYY)', where MONTH is the full name (%B).
Here's code-
# Import date
from datetime import date

# Create a date object
andrew = date(1992, 8, 26)

# Print the date in the format 'MONTH (YYYY)'
print(andrew.strftime('%Y'))
What's the problem in my code🤔
need help