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How to fix ValueError: time data ’18/02/2020 20:14:31′ does not match format ‘%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S’ in Python?

Gauthier Buttez

I am developing a web application with Flask Python. I have a Mysql table with a text column date:

-- date --
10/06/2020 18:50:17
10/06/2020 18:55:10
28/05/2020 22:18:06
29/03/2020 20:47:01
29/03/2020 21:29:14

These data above are date in string format. I need to convert these string dates into format dates.

I did this in python :

actions = Action.query.all() # This is SQLAlchemy request to get all the rows of table 'Action'
for action in actions:
    date=action.date
    # convert this date string in date format
    date_time_obj = datetime.strptime(date, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S')
    print(date_time_obj)

But I get this error output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "j:/Dropbox/cff/Python/folder/test.py", line 18, in <module>
    date_time_obj = datetime.strptime(date, '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S')
  File "C:UsersNinoAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython37lib_strptime.py", line 577, in _strptime_datetime
    tt, fraction, gmtoff_fraction = _strptime(data_string, format)
  File "C:UsersNinoAppDataLocalProgramsPythonPython37lib_strptime.py", line 359, in _strptime
    (data_string, format))
ValueError: time data '18/02/2020 20:14:31' does not match format '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S'

I don’t understand as ’18/02/2020 20:14:31′ corresponding perfectly to format ‘%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S’

What is wrong in my code? Did I miss something?

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Answer

You date format should be

from datetime import datetime
datetime.strptime(date, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S')

(with Y in upper case)