Python Datetime Format

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Last Updated on March 2, 2022 by Jay

The Datetime data can take many different forms and this is a reference/guide on the Python Datetime format.

Datetime formats are useful when we convert either from Datetime to String or vice versa.

Let’s create a datetime value:

import datetime
tdy = datetime.datetime.now()

print(tdy)
2022-03-02 00:43:41.710398

The datetime value above contains the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond. The value has the following format: “%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f”.

We can use the strftime(format) method to convert a datetime object into its string representation:

print(type(tdy))
<class 'datetime.datetime'>

tdy.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f")
'2022-03-02 00:43:41.710398'

Python Datetime Format Codes

Directive	Meaning	Possible Values	Example 2022-03-02 00:43:41.710398
%a	Weekday short name	Sun, Mon, … , Sat	Wed
%A	Weekday full name	Sunday, Monday, …, Saturday	Wednesday
%w	Weekday number	0 (Sunday), 1 (Monday), …, 6 (Saturday)	3
%d	Day of month number	01, 02, …, 31	02
%b	Month short name	Jan, Feb, …, Dec	Mar
%B	Month full name	January, February, …, December	March
%m	Month number	01, 02, …, 12	03
%y	Year last two digits	…, 19, 20, …, 22, …	22
%Y	Year four digits	…, 2019, 2020, …, 2022, …	2022
%H	Hour 24 hr version	00, 01, …, 23	00
%I	Hour 12 hr version	01, 02, …, 12	12
%p	AM/PM	AM, PM	AM
%M	Minute number	00, 01, …, 59	43
%S	Second number	00, 01, …, 59	41
%f	Microsecond number	000000, 000001, …, 999999	710398
%j	Day of year number	001, 002, …, 365	061
%U	Week number of the year (Sun first day of week)	00, 01, …, 53	09
%W	Week number of the year (Mon first day of week)		09
%c	Local format for date and time		Wed Mar 2 00:43:41 2022
%C	Century number first two digits	…, 19, 20, …, 21, …	20
%x	Local format for date		03/02/22
%X	Local format for time		00:43:41
%%	A literal % character	%	%

Additional Resources

How to Convert Column to Datetime in Pandas

How to Convert Datetime to String in Pandas

How to Filter Pandas Dataframe by Date