How can I convert a string like 3hours26minutes33seconds into HH:MM:SS format in python?

Question

I have a string '3hours26minutes33seconds' and I need to convert this into HH:MM:SS format. I tried using dateutil.parser.parse to no avail.

is the hour part always < 24 ? or could you also have e.g. '33hours26minutes33seconds'? — FObersteiner, Apr 24 '20 at 12:07
Is the order fixed, i.e., could you simply replace all runs of non-numeric characters with `:`? — chepner, Apr 24 '20 at 12:13

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 24 '20 at 11:58

You can use datetime and its strptime function to convert it to a datetime object:

import datetime

string = "3hours26minutes33seconds"
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(string, "%Hhours%Mminutes%Sseconds")

Then you format that datetime into the desired string format with strftime:

date.strftime("%H:%M:%S")

1 Answers1