Python DateTime Format - Examples

Python DateTime Format

You can format a date string using datetime Python package.

datetime package provides directives to access a specific part of date, time or datetime object of datetime package.

First, we will present you all the directives (or wildcard characters) that could be used to format a date and time string. Then we will proceed with examples, on how to use these directive to construct a required format for date.

Directives

Following is table of directives with an example and description for each of them.

Directive	Example	Description
%a	Wed	Weekday, short version, usually three characters in length
%A	Wednesday	Weekday, full version
%w	3	Weekday as a number 0-6, 0 is Sunday
%d	31	Day of month 01-31
%b	Dec	Month name, short version, usually three characters in length
%B	December	Month name, full version
%m	12	Month as a number 01-12, January is 01
%y	21	Year, short version, without century (2021)
%Y	2021	Year, full version
%H	17	Hour 00-23 (24 hour format)
%I	05	Hour 00-12 (12 hour format)
%p	PM	AM/PM
%M	35	Minute 00-59
%S	14	Second 00-59
%f	638745	Microsecond 000000-999999
%z	+0530	UTC offset
%Z	CST	Timezone
%j	182	Day number of year 001-366 (366 for leap year, 365 otherwise)
%U	47	Week number of year, Sunday as the first day of week, 00-53
%W	51	Week number of year, Monday as the first day of week, 00-53
%c	Tue Dec 10 17:41:00 2019	Local version of date and time
%x	12/10/19	Local version of date (mm/dd/yy)
%X	17:41:00	Local version of time (hh:mm:ss)
%%	%	A % character

Examples

1. Format current datetime

In this example, we will get the current time and extract different parts of the date. With these we will format different kinds of date strings.

Python Program

from datetime import datetime

dt = datetime.now()

print(dt)
print('\nDirectives\n--------------')
print(dt.strftime('Weekday short version : %a'))
print(dt.strftime('Weekday full version  : %A'))
print(dt.strftime('Weekday as a number   : %w'))
print(dt.strftime('Day of month          : %d'))
print(dt.strftime('Month Name short ver  : %d'))
print(dt.strftime('Month Name full ver   : %b'))
print(dt.strftime('Month as a number     : %m'))
print(dt.strftime('Year short version    : %y'))
print(dt.strftime('Year full version     : %Y'))
print(dt.strftime('Hour (00-23)          : %H'))
print(dt.strftime('Hour (00-11)          : %I'))
print(dt.strftime('AM/PM                 : %p'))
print(dt.strftime('Minute                : %M'))
print(dt.strftime('Second                : %S'))


print('\nFormatted Date Strings\n--------------')
print(dt.strftime('%a %d-%m-%Y'))
print(dt.strftime('%a %d/%m/%Y'))
print(dt.strftime('%a %d/%m/%y'))
print(dt.strftime('%A %d-%m-%Y, %H:%M:%S'))
print(dt.strftime('%X %x'))

Output

2019-12-10 14:43:35.542195

Directives
--------------
Weekday short version : Tue
Weekday full version  : Tuesday
Weekday as a number   : 2
Day of month          : 10
Month Name short ver  : 10
Month Name full ver   : Dec
Month as a number     : 12
Year short version    : 19
Year full version     : 2019
Hour (00-23)          : 14
Hour (00-11)          : 02
AM/PM                 : PM
Minute                : 43
Second                : 35

Formatted Date Strings
--------------
Tue 10-12-2019
Tue 10/12/2019
Tue 10/12/19
Tuesday 10-12-2019, 14:43:35
14:43:35 12/10/19

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned how to format datetime in Python, with the help of well detailed examples.