Convert date to datetime in Python

Question

Is there a built-in method for converting a date to a datetime in Python, for example getting the datetime for the midnight of the given date? The opposite conversion is easy: datetime has a .date() method.

Do I really have to manually call datetime(d.year, d.month, d.day)?

Answer 1

You can use datetime.combine(date, time); for the time, you create a datetime.time object initialized to midnight.

from datetime import date from datetime import datetime  dt = datetime.combine(date.today(), datetime.min.time()) 

Answer 2

There are several ways, although I do believe the one you mention (and dislike) is the most readable one.

>>> t=datetime.date.today() >>> datetime.datetime.fromordinal(t.toordinal()) datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0) >>> datetime.datetime(t.year, t.month, t.day) datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0) >>> datetime.datetime(*t.timetuple()[:-4]) datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0) 

and so forth -- but basically they all hinge on appropriately extracting info from the date object and ploughing it back into the suitable ctor or classfunction for datetime.