How do I get the day of week given a date?

Question

I want to find out the following: given a date (datetime object), what is the corresponding day of the week?

For instance, Sunday is the first day, Mond

Answer 1

Use weekday():

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.today()
datetime.datetime(2012, 3, 23, 23, 24, 55, 173504)
>>> datetime.datetime.today().weekday()
4

From the documentation:

Return the day of the week as an integer, where Monday is 0 and Sunday is 6.

Answer 2

If you'd like to have the date in English:

from datetime import date
import calendar
my_date = date.today()
calendar.day_name[my_date.weekday()]  #'Wednesday'

Answer 3

A solution whithout imports for dates after 1700/1/1

def weekDay(year, month, day):
    offset = [0, 31, 59, 90, 120, 151, 181, 212, 243, 273, 304, 334]
    week   = ['Sunday', 
              'Monday', 
              'Tuesday', 
              'Wednesday', 
              'Thursday',  
              'Friday', 
              'Saturday']
    afterFeb = 1
    if month > 2: afterFeb = 0
    aux = year - 1700 - afterFeb
    # dayOfWeek for 1700/1/1 = 5, Friday
    dayOfWeek  = 5
    # partial sum of days betweem current date and 1700/1/1
    dayOfWeek += (aux + afterFeb) * 365                  
    # leap year correction    
    dayOfWeek += aux / 4 - aux / 100 + (aux + 100) / 400     
    # sum monthly and day offsets
    dayOfWeek += offset[month - 1] + (day - 1)               
    dayOfWeek %= 7
    return dayOfWeek, week[dayOfWeek]

print weekDay(2013, 6, 15) == (6, 'Saturday')
print weekDay(1969, 7, 20) == (0, 'Sunday')
print weekDay(1945, 4, 30) == (1, 'Monday')
print weekDay(1900, 1, 1)  == (1, 'Monday')
print weekDay(1789, 7, 14) == (2, 'Tuesday')

Answer 4

If you're not solely reliant on the datetime module, calendar might be a better alternative. This, for example, will provide you with the day codes:

calendar.weekday(2017,12,22);

And this will give you the day itself:

days = ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday"]
days[calendar.weekday(2017,12,22)]

Or in the style of python, as a one liner:

["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday"][calendar.weekday(2017,12,22)]

Answer 5

Here is my python3 implementation.

months = {'jan' : 1, 'feb' : 4, 'mar' : 4, 'apr':0, 'may':2, 'jun':5, 'jul':6, 'aug':3, 'sep':6, 'oct':1, 'nov':4, 'dec':6}
dates = {'Sunday':1, 'Monday':2, 'Tuesday':3, 'Wednesday':4, 'Thursday':5, 'Friday':6, 'Saterday':0}
ranges = {'1800-1899':2, '1900-1999':0, '2000-2099':6, '2100-2199':4, '2200-2299':2}

def getValue(val, dic):
    if(len(val)==4):
        for k,v in dic.items():
            x,y=int(k.split('-')[0]),int(k.split('-')[1])
            val = int(val)
            if(val>=x and val<=y):
                return v
    else:
        return dic[val]

def getDate(val):
    return (list(dates.keys())[list(dates.values()).index(val)]) 



def main(myDate):
    dateArray = myDate.split('-')
    # print(dateArray)
    date,month,year = dateArray[2],dateArray[1],dateArray[0]
    # print(date,month,year)

    date = int(date)
    month_v = getValue(month, months)
    year_2 = int(year[2:])
    div = year_2//4
    year_v = getValue(year, ranges)
    sumAll = date+month_v+year_2+div+year_v
    val = (sumAll)%7
    str_date = getDate(val)

    print('{} is a {}.'.format(myDate, str_date))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    testDate = '2018-mar-4'
    main(testDate)

Answer 6

Here's a simple code snippet to solve this problem

import datetime

intDay = datetime.date(year=2000, month=12, day=1).weekday()
days = ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"]
print(days[intDay])

The output should be:

Friday