How to Convert a String to a Date in Python

Working with dates and time is one of the most useful things to do in Python.

When working with dates, sometimes you are only given a string and you need to convert it to a date object.

In this post, we will look at how to convert a string to a date in Python.

How to convert a string to a date

Let's say we have a string that we want to convert to a date.

PYTHON
date_string = "2022-01-01"

We can use the datetime module to convert the string to a date by using the built-in strptime function.

We just pass in the raw string and the format of the string so that it can be parsed.

PYTHON
from datetime import datetime

date_string = "2022-01-01"

date = datetime.strptime(date_string, "%Y-%m-%d")

Now you can confirm that it worked by printing the type of the date and the date itself:

PYTHON
from datetime import datetime

date_string = "2022-01-01"

date = datetime.strptime(date_string, "%Y-%m-%d")

print(type(date))
print(date)

BASH
<class 'datetime.datetime'>
2022-01-01 00:00:00

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to convert a string to a date in Python.

Simply import the datetime module and pass in the string and format of it, and it will take care of the rest for you.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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