Getting today's date in YYYY-MM-DD in Python?

Question

I'm using:

str(datetime.datetime.today()).split()[0] 

to return today's date in the YYYY-MM-DD format.

Is there a less crude way to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can use strftime:

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') '2021-01-26' 

Additionally, for anyone also looking for a zero-padded Hour, Minute, and Second at the end: (Comment by Gabriel Staples)

>>> datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S') '2021-01-26-16:50:03' 

Answer 2

You can use datetime.date.today() and convert the resulting datetime.date object to a string:

from datetime import date today = str(date.today()) print(today)   # '2017-12-26'