Python - strptime() Method

The strptime method is defined under datetime class of datetime module. It is used to convert a string into a datetime object. To convert a string into datetime object, it need to be in certain format.

To work with strptime() method, the datetime module or datetime class from datetime module must be imported in the current script. In the example below, the module is datetime imported. See the example below for syntax.

import datetime as dt

MyString = "25 Oct, 2019"
x = dt.datetime.strptime(MyString, "%d %b, %Y")
print(x)

MyString = "24/9/2018"
x = dt.datetime.strptime(MyString, "%d/%m/%Y")
print(x)

MyString = "23/8/2017 10:15:20"
x = dt.datetime.strptime(MyString, "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")
print(x)

MyString = "22/7/2016 9 hr 18 min 27 sec"
x = dt.datetime.strptime(MyString, "%d/%m/%Y %H hr %M min %S sec")
print(x)

The output of the above code will be:

2019-10-25 00:00:00
2018-09-24 00:00:00
2017-08-23 10:15:20
2016-07-22 09:18:27

The format code list

The table below shows all the format codes which can be used with strptime() method.