How do I parse an ISO 8601-formatted date?

Question

I need to parse RFC 3339 strings like \"2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z\" into Python\'s datetime type.

I have found strptime in the Python sta

Answer 1

Because ISO 8601 allows many variations of optional colons and dashes being present, basically CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss[Z|(+|-)hh:mm]. If you want to use strptime, you need to strip out those variations first.

The goal is to generate a utc datetime object.

---

If you just want a basic case that work for UTC with the Z suffix like 2016-06-29T19:36:29.3453Z:

datetime.datetime.strptime(timestamp.translate(None, ':-'), "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%fZ")

---

If you want to handle timezone offsets like 2016-06-29T19:36:29.3453-0400 or 2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686+05:00 use the following. These will convert all variations into something without variable delimiters like 20080903T205635.450686+0500 making it more consistent/easier to parse.

import re
# this regex removes all colons and all 
# dashes EXCEPT for the dash indicating + or - utc offset for the timezone
conformed_timestamp = re.sub(r"[:]|([-](?!((\d{2}[:]\d{2})|(\d{4}))$))", '', timestamp)
datetime.datetime.strptime(conformed_timestamp, "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%f%z" )

---

If your system does not support the %z strptime directive (you see something like ValueError: 'z' is a bad directive in format '%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%f%z') then you need to manually offset the time from Z (UTC). Note %z may not work on your system in python versions < 3 as it depended on the c library support which varies across system/python build type (i.e. Jython, Cython, etc.).

import re
import datetime

# this regex removes all colons and all 
# dashes EXCEPT for the dash indicating + or - utc offset for the timezone
conformed_timestamp = re.sub(r"[:]|([-](?!((\d{2}[:]\d{2})|(\d{4}))$))", '', timestamp)

# split on the offset to remove it. use a capture group to keep the delimiter
split_timestamp = re.split(r"[+|-]",conformed_timestamp)
main_timestamp = split_timestamp[0]
if len(split_timestamp) == 3:
    sign = split_timestamp[1]
    offset = split_timestamp[2]
else:
    sign = None
    offset = None

# generate the datetime object without the offset at UTC time
output_datetime = datetime.datetime.strptime(main_timestamp +"Z", "%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%fZ" )
if offset:
    # create timedelta based on offset
    offset_delta = datetime.timedelta(hours=int(sign+offset[:-2]), minutes=int(sign+offset[-2:]))
    # offset datetime with timedelta
    output_datetime = output_datetime + offset_delta

Answer 2

Initially I tried with:

from operator import neg, pos
from time import strptime, mktime
from datetime import datetime, tzinfo, timedelta

class MyUTCOffsetTimezone(tzinfo):
    @staticmethod
    def with_offset(offset_no_signal, signal):  # type: (str, str) -> MyUTCOffsetTimezone
        return MyUTCOffsetTimezone((pos if signal == '+' else neg)(
            (datetime.strptime(offset_no_signal, '%H:%M') - datetime(1900, 1, 1))
          .total_seconds()))

    def __init__(self, offset, name=None):
        self.offset = timedelta(seconds=offset)
        self.name = name or self.__class__.__name__

    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return self.offset

    def tzname(self, dt):
        return self.name

    def dst(self, dt):
        return timedelta(0)


def to_datetime_tz(dt):  # type: (str) -> datetime
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f'
    if dt[-6] in frozenset(('+', '-')):
        dt, sign, offset = strptime(dt[:-6], fmt), dt[-6], dt[-5:]
        return datetime.fromtimestamp(mktime(dt),
                                      tz=MyUTCOffsetTimezone.with_offset(offset, sign))
    elif dt[-1] == 'Z':
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + 'Z')
    return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt)

But that didn't work on negative timezones. This however I got working fine, in Python 3.7.3:

from datetime import datetime


def to_datetime_tz(dt):  # type: (str) -> datetime
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f'
    if dt[-6] in frozenset(('+', '-')):
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + '%z')
    elif dt[-1] == 'Z':
        return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt + 'Z')
    return datetime.strptime(dt, fmt)

Some tests, note that the out only differs by precision of microseconds. Got to 6 digits of precision on my machine, but YMMV:

for dt_in, dt_out in (
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000Z', '2019-03-11T08:00:00'),
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000+11:00', '2019-03-11T08:00:00+11:00'),
        ('2019-03-11T08:00:00.000-11:00', '2019-03-11T08:00:00-11:00')
    ):
    isoformat = to_datetime_tz(dt_in).isoformat()
    assert isoformat == dt_out, '{} != {}'.format(isoformat, dt_out)

Answer 3

import re,datetime
s="2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z"
d=datetime.datetime(*map(int, re.split('[^\d]', s)[:-1]))