Converting string with UTC offset to a datetime object [duplicate]

Question

Given this string: "Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:50 +0000" how does one convert it to a datetime object?

After doing some reading I feel like this should work, but it doesn't...

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> >>> str = 'Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:50 +0000' >>> fmt = '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z' >>> datetime.strptime(str, fmt) Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>   File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/_strptime.py", line 317, in _strptime     (bad_directive, format)) ValueError: 'z' is a bad directive in format '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z' 

It should be noted that this works without a problem:

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> >>> str = 'Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:50' >>> fmt = '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S' >>> datetime.strptime(str, fmt) datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 9, 14, 10, 50) 

But I'm stuck with "Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:50 +0000". I would prefer to convert exactly that without changing (or slicing) it in any way.

Answer 1

It looks as if strptime doesn't always support %z. Python appears to just call the C function, and strptime doesn't support %z on your platform.

Note: from Python 3.2 onwards it will always work.