How to convert a date into a list in python

Question

I am writing a program that needs live dates(Means like current date). Here is the code.

from datetime import date
today_date = date.today()
print(list(today_date))

Now I want to convert this date into a list. But it gives me an error because the element obtained using date.today() isn't "iterable". So how do I actually convert the date into a list?

What is your expected output? – Kellen Jun 25 '20 at 18:29 — Kellen, Jun 25 '20 at 18:29
like turning 2020-06-25 into 2020 ,06 , 25 – hmood Jun 25 '20 at 18:31 — hmood, Jun 25 '20 at 18:31

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:34

6

Perhaps you could use .timetuple for your purposes:

>>> datetime.date.today().timetuple()[:3]
(2020, 6, 25)

answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:34

juanpa.arrivillaga

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And you can wrap it in a `list` if a tuple isn't desired – Kellen Jun 25 '20 at 18:39

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:33

3

Each part of the date and time are available as attributes of the datetime object. You can try something like below.

import datetime

today_date = datetime.datetime.today()

date_list = [today_date.year, today_date.month, today_date.day]

You can also access time similarly

answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:33

Edwin Cruz

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Is this the answer you were looking for? – Edwin Cruz Jun 25 '20 at 18:36
Yes, this is the answer – hmood Jun 25 '20 at 18:38
@snoopstick I think you should also check [juanpa.arrivillaga's answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/62582119/9608759) which is more pythonic and easily extendable. – Asocia Jun 25 '20 at 18:40

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:40

There is a method called timetuple:

>>> from datetime import date
>>> today_date = date.today()
>>> today_date.timetuple()
time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=177, tm_isdst=-1)

As you can see, because you used date rather than datetime, the time part is zero.

You can convert the first three items to a list:

>>> list(today_date.timetuple()[:3])
[2020, 6, 25]

If you use datetime, then it is used in the same way, but the time part is also populated:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.today().timetuple()
time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=19, tm_min=39, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=177, tm_isdst=-1)

So you could do, for example:

>>> list(datetime.today().timetuple()[:6])
[2020, 6, 25, 19, 40, 35]

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:34

1

You can simply add the year, month and day as elements in the array.

list = [today_date.year, today_date.month, today_date.day]

answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:34

Rishikesh Dhokare

3,559
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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 19:15

from datetime import date
today_date = date.today()
print(str(today_date).split('-'))

OR

from datetime import datetime
print(str(datetime.now()).split()[0].split('-'))

OR

datetime.date.today().timetuple()[:3]
(2020, 6, 25)

OR

import datetime
today_date = datetime.datetime.today()
date_list = [today_date.year, today_date.month, today_date.day]

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 18:39

Instead of list(), you can use split():

from datetime import date
today_date = date.today()
print(str(today_date).split('-'))

Output:

['2020', '06', '25']

Another thing you can do:

from datetime import datetime
print(str(datetime.now()).split()[0].split('-'))

Output:

['2020', '06', '25']

How to convert a date into a list in python

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