AttributeError: 'datetime' module has no attribute 'strptime'

Here is my Transaction class:

class Transaction(object):
    def __init__(self, company, num, price, date, is_buy):
        self.company = company
        self.num = num
        self.price = price
        self.date = datetime.strptime(date, "%Y-%m-%d")
        self.is_buy = is_buy

And when I'm trying to run the date function:

tr = Transaction('AAPL', 600, '2013-10-25')
print tr.date

I'm getting the following error:

   self.date = datetime.strptime(self.d, "%Y-%m-%d")
 AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'strptime'

How can I fix that?


If I had to guess, you did this:

import datetime

at the top of your code. This means that you have to do this:

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

to access the strptime method. Or, you could change the import statement to this:

from datetime import datetime

and access it as you are.

The people who made the datetime module also named their class datetime:

#module  class    method
datetime.datetime.strptime(date, "%Y-%m-%d")

Use the correct call: strptime is a classmethod of the datetime.datetime class, it's not a function in the datetime module.

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

As mentioned by Jon Clements in the comments, some people do from datetime import datetime, which would bind the datetime name to the datetime class, and make your initial code work.

To identify which case you're facing (in the future), look at your import statements

  • import datetime: that's the module (that's what you have right now).
  • from datetime import datetime: that's the class.