Converting a String into a datetime object in python

You should use datetime.datetime.strptime(), which converts a string and date format into a datetime.datetime object.

The format fields (e.g., %Y denotes four-digit year) are specified in the Python documentation.

>>> import datetime
>>> s      = '2011-09-04 23:44:30.801000'
>>> format = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f'
>>> date=datetime.datetime.strptime(s, format)
>>> date
datetime.datetime(2011, 9, 4, 23, 44, 30, 801000)

An alternative to datetime.datetime.strptime would be the python-dateutil libray. dateutil will allow you to do the same thing without the explicit formatting step:

>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> date_obj = parser.parse('2011-09-04 23:44:30.801000')
>>> date
datetime.datetime(2011, 9, 4, 23, 44, 30, 801000)

It's not a standard library module, but it is very handy for parsing date and time strings, especially if you don't have control over the format they come in.

One caveat if you install this library: version 1.5 is for Python 2 and version 2.0 is for Python 3. easy_install and pip default to installing the 2.0 version, so you have to explicitly indicate python-dateutil==1.5 if you are using Python 2.

Use datetime.datetime.strptime.

# date string to datetime object
date_str = "2008-11-10 17:53:59"
dt_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
print repr(dt_obj)