Convert string to date using arrow python

Question

I'm trying to convert string to date using arrow module. During the conversion, I received this error: arrow.parser.ParserMatchError: Failed to match '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p %Z' when parsing 'Wednesday 06 November 2019 03:05:42 PM CDT'

The conversion is done using one simple line according to this documentation:

date = arrow.get(date, '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p %Z')

I also try to do this with datetime and got another error:

ValueError: time data 'Wednesday 06 November 2019 03:27:33 PM CDT' does not match format '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p %Z'

What am I missing?

What is the `arrow` module and why are you referring to the Python 2 versions of the `strftime()` and `strptime()` functions? — martineau, Nov 06 '19 at 21:27
@martineau a [module](https://arrow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) for dates. I edited the question using `datetime` also. — liorko, Nov 06 '19 at 21:28
hardcoding timezone here like `datetime.datetime.strptime('Wednesday 06 November 2019 03:05:42 PM CDT', '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p CDT')` works — Hamza Rashid, Nov 06 '19 at 21:45

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '19 at 21:49

0

Issue is with timezone, hard-coding timezone here works

import datetime
datetime.datetime.strptime('Wednesday 06 November 2019 03:05:42 PM CDT', '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p CDT')

answered Nov 06 '19 at 21:49

Hamza Rashid

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 07 '19 at 00:15

Although you could just hardcode 'CDT' into your code, as @Hamza Rashid auggests in his answer, that will break if the timezone information ever changes to something else, such as 'CST' or perhaps '-0600'.

To avoid that potential issue, I'd instead use something like the following, which just ignores everything in the string from the last space character in it onwards:

import datetime

date = 'Wednesday 06 November 2019 03:05:42 PM CDT'
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(date[:date.rindex(' ')], '%A %d %B %Y %I:%M:%S %p')
print(date)  # -> 2019-11-06 15:05:42

Convert string to date using arrow python

2 Answers2