How to Efficiently Parse ISO 8601 Strings into Python datetime Objects?

How to Parse ISO 8601 Strings into Python Datetime Objects

ISO 8601 is a widely used standard for representing dates and times. It is often used in data exchange and web services. However, parsing ISO 8601 strings into Python datetime objects can be a bit challenging.

A Hackish Approach

One common approach is to use the time.strptime() function to parse the string. However, this approach can be tedious and error-prone. Here's an example:

datetime.datetime(*time.strptime("2009-05-28T16:15:00", "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S")[:6])

A Cleaner Solution

Fortunately, there are more elegant ways to parse ISO 8601 strings. The dateutil library provides a convenient function called parser.parse():

from dateutil import parser

yourdate = parser.parse("2009-05-28T16:15:00")

This function can handle a wide range of ISO 8601 formats, including strings with timezones.

Example Usage

Here are some examples of how to use the parser.parse() function:

# Parse a basic ISO 8601 string
dateutil.parser.parse("2009-05-28T16:15:00Z")

# Parse a string with a timezone offset
dateutil.parser.parse("2009-05-28T16:15:00-05:00")

# Parse a string with a fractional second
dateutil.parser.parse("2009-05-28T16:15:00.123Z")

The parser.parse() function returns a datetime object that you can use in your Python code.

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