Python Strptime Occasionally Missing Microseconds

Question

I have data being passed in coming in with the format %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f.

So I work with the data based on that structure and once a blue moon something goes wrong. So I started dumping it out when something breaks and I noticed the microseconds at the end were missing.

I'm presuming this means it was dead on 0 and it's not sending it at all instead of sending .000000

Of the top of my head I could split it by "." and count the len each time. Split it into %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S if it's below the length of having the microseconds but is there a neater way of dealing with milliseconds missing and replacing it with 000's?

I caught the dump of the milliseconds missing and a ValueError throwing right after it. I didn't think about it I guess I assumed it'd sent .000000 but it seems like the most obvious problem

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 12 '16 at 00:55

4

Why not just try both?

def parse_txt(txt):
    try: 
        return datetime.datetime.strptime(txt, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f")
    except ValueError:
        return datetime.datetime.strptime(txt, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

parse_txt("2001-01-01 01:01:01")    # => datetime.datetime(2001, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)

answered Feb 12 '16 at 00:55

donkopotamus

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God damnit... it's not even like I didn't think of this I thought it would ignore the %f, tested and saw it fail and then forgot. – PoweredByCoffee Feb 12 '16 at 00:58
It's been a long day. Thanks for taking the time sorry it was something so pointless. – PoweredByCoffee Feb 12 '16 at 00:58
Your coffee value is low – donkopotamus Feb 12 '16 at 00:59
Actually I think I need to swap that around if I try it with %f first it'll have the same issue (since that's what I'm currently doing) but if I try with just the %S and then except to the %f I think that works. – PoweredByCoffee Feb 12 '16 at 01:00
@PoweredByCoffee No, it won't have an issue – donkopotamus Feb 12 '16 at 01:01

Python Strptime Occasionally Missing Microseconds

1 Answers1