How do I turn a python datetime into a string, with readable format date?

t = e['updated_parsed']
dt = datetime.datetime(t[0],t[1],t[2],t[3],t[4],t[5],t[6]
print dt
>>>2010-01-28 08:39:49.000003

How do I turn that into a string?:

"January 28, 2010"

Solution 1:

The datetime class has a method strftime. The Python docs documents the different formats it accepts:

• Python 2: strftime() Behavior
• Python 3: strftime() Behavior

For this specific example, it would look something like:

my_datetime.strftime("%B %d, %Y")

Solution 2:

Here is how you can accomplish the same using python's general formatting function...

>>>from datetime import datetime
>>>"{:%B %d, %Y}".format(datetime.now())

The formatting characters used here are the same as those used by strftime. Don't miss the leading : in the format specifier.

Using format() instead of strftime() in most cases can make the code more readable, easier to write and consistent with the way formatted output is generated...

>>>"{} today's date is: {:%B %d, %Y}".format("Andre", datetime.now())

Compare the above with the following strftime() alternative...

>>>"{} today's date is {}".format("Andre", datetime.now().strftime("%B %d, %Y"))

Moreover, the following is not going to work...

>>>datetime.now().strftime("%s %B %d, %Y" % "Andre")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#11>", line 1, in <module>
    datetime.now().strftime("%s %B %d, %Y" % "Andre")
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

And so on...