change time format for a string

Question

I want to write a function to change the time format and an offset is used to shift the date

For example, I have a string

\"this is a string 2012-04-12          


        

Answer 1

Your error is caused by you trying to call report.groups(); you never applied the regular expression on the report parameter.

Your code can be simplified significantly:

_dt = re.compile(r"""
    [12]\d{3}-   # Year (1xxx or 2xxx),
    [0-1]\d-     # month (0x, 1x or 2x)
    [0-3]\d      # day (0x, 1x, 2x or 3x)
    (?:\s        # optional: time after a space
        [0-2]\d: # Hour (0x, 1x or 2x)
        [0-5]\d  # Minute (0x though to 5x)
    )?
    """, flags=re.VERBOSE)

def _deIDReportDate(report, offset=654321):
    def replace(match):
        dt = match.group()

        if len(dt) > 10:
            # with time
            dt = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')
            dt += datetime.timedelta(seconds=offset)
            return dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y %H:%M')

        dt = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt, '%Y-%m-%d')
        dt += datetime.timedelta(seconds=offset)
        return dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')

    return _dt.sub(replace, report)

The replace nested function is called for each non-overlapping match in the input string.