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  4. Python: Converting a Date String to Timestamp

Python: Converting a Date String to Timestamp

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Mark Needham user avatar
Mark Needham
·
Oct. 29, 14 · Interview
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I’ve been playing around with Python over the last few days while cleaning up a data set and one thing I wanted to do was translate date strings into a timestamp.

I started with a date in this format:

date_text = "13SEP2014"

So the first step is to translate that into a Python date – the strftime section of the documentation is useful for figuring out which format code is needed:

import datetime

date_text = "13SEP2014"
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_text, "%d%b%Y")

print(date)
$ python dates.py
2014-09-13 00:00:00

The next step was to translate that to a UNIX timestamp. I thought there might be a method or property on the Date object that I could access but I couldn’t find one and so ended up using calendar to do the transformation:

import datetime
import calendar

date_text = "13SEP2014"
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_text, "%d%b%Y")

print(date)
print(calendar.timegm(date.utctimetuple()))
$ python dates.py
2014-09-13 00:00:00
1410566400

It’s not too tricky so hopefully I shall remember next time.

Python (language) Strings

Published at DZone with permission of Mark Needham, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • Enumerate and Zip in Python
  • Efficient String Formatting With Python f-Strings
  • Python F-Strings
  • Using Regular Expressions in Python: A Brief Guide

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