Getting formatted datetime in Python, like in PHP

Question

How to get formatted date time in Python in the same way as in PHP date('M d Y', $timestamp); ?

Answer 1

 >>> import time >>> timestamp = 1284375159 >>> time.strftime("%m %d %Y",time.localtime(timestamp)) '09 13 2010' 

Answer 2

You can use the appropriate strftime function. The following is an example of using datetime objects.

 >>> from datetime import datetime >>> today = datetime.today() >>> today.strftime("%m %d %Y") '09 13 2010' 

Answer 3

Date, datetime, and time objects support the strftime (format) method to create a string representing the time under the control of an explicit format string.

Here is a list of format codes with their directive and meaning.

  %a Locale's abbreviated weekday name. %A Locale's full weekday name. %b Locale's abbreviated month name. %B Locale's full month name. %c Locale's appropriate date and time representation. %d Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31]. %f Microsecond as a decimal number [0,999999], zero-padded on the left %H Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23]. %I Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12]. %j Day of the year as a decimal number [001,366]. %m Month as a decimal number [01,12]. %M Minute as a decimal number [00,59]. %p Locale's equivalent of either AM or PM. %S Second as a decimal number [00,61]. %U Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) %w Weekday as a decimal number [0(Sunday),6]. %W Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) %x Locale's appropriate date representation. %X Locale's appropriate time representation. %y Year without century as a decimal number [00,99]. %Y Year with century as a decimal number. %z UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM. %Z Time zone name (empty string if the object is naive). %% A literal '%' character. 

This is what we can do with datetime and time modules in Python

  import time import datetime print "Time in seconds since the epoch: %s" %time.time() print "Current date and time: " , datetime.datetime.now() print "Or like this: " ,datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%y-%m-%d-%H-%M") print "Current year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%Y") print "Month of year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%B") print "Week number of the year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%W") print "Weekday of the week: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%w") print "Day of year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%j") print "Day of the month : ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%d") print "Day of week: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%A") 

This will print something like this:

  Time in seconds since the epoch: 1349271346.46 Current date and time: 2012-10-03 15:35:46.461491 Or like this: 12-10-03-15-35 Current year: 2012 Month of year: October Week number of the year: 40 Weekday of the week: 3 Day of year: 277 Day of the month : 03 Day of week: Wednesday 

Answer 4

Back in 2003, Simon Willison wrote DateFormat , a date format translation class that allows you to use PHP-style date format strings in Python:

 >>> from datetime import datetime >>> from DateFormat import DateFormat >>> timestamp = 1354633606 >>> df = DateFormat(datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)) >>> df.format('M d Y') 'Dec 04 2012' 

DateFormat is available here: http://simonwillison.net/2003/oct/7/dateinpython/