Python Question
Python date comparison with string output/format
I'm currently trying to writing a script to automate a function at work, but I'm not intimately familiar with Python. I'm trying to take a XML dump and compare a specific entry's date to see if the time has passed or not.
The date is in a particular format, given:
<3-letter Month> <DD> <HH:MM:SS> <YYYY> <3-letter Timezone>
For example:
May 14 20:11:20 2014 GMT
I've parsed out a string in that raw form, and need to somehow compare it with the current time to find out if the time has passed or not. That said, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how I should go about either formatting my text, or choosing the right mask/time format in Python.
I've been messing around with different variations of the same basic format:
if(trimmed < time.strftime("%x") ):
Trimmed is the clean date/time string. Time is derived from import time.
Is there a simple way to fix this or will I have to dig into converting the format etc.? I know the above attempt is simplistic, but I'm still very new to Python. Thanks for your time and patience!
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Answer Source
You should use combination of gmtime (for GMT time),mktime and datetime.
from time import gmtime,mktime
from datetime import datetime
s = "May 14 20:11:20 2014 GMT"
f = "%b %d %H:%M:%S %Y GMT"
dt = datetime.strptime(s, f)
gmt = datetime.fromtimestamp(mktime(gmtime()))
if dt<gmt:
print(dt)
else:
print(gmt)
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