python strptime vs dateutil - recommended use

Question

I need to convert between strings and datetime objects quite often - up until now i have always used strptime and strftime. I started working with the google calendar API where i recieve strings like this: '2018-03-17T09:00:00+01:00

It seems like i need to convert the +01:00 into 0100 for strptime which is a little annoying. While i dont have this issue with dateutil there are a few other inconveniences.Also i saw that the last update of dateutil was in 2016 which seems odd.

So my question is which one would you recommend for adding and substracting dates and datetimes and switching between string and datetime obj? Also is dateutil still maintained or is it outdated?

Thanks a lot! - Sally

Answer 1

It seems like i need to convert the +01:00 into 0100 for strptime

No you don't.

For one thing, the standard format is +0100, not 0100.

For another, strptime handles +01:00 just fine:

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('2018-08-13T11:18:24+00:00', 
...                            '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z')
datetime.datetime(2018, 8, 13, 11, 18, 24, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('2018-08-13T11:18:24+01:00', 
...                            '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z')
datetime.datetime(2018, 8, 13, 11, 18, 24, tzinfo=datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(seconds=3600)))

So, the problem you're trying to solve doesn't exist in the first place.

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While i dont have this issue with dateutil there are a few other inconveniences.Also i saw that the last update of dateutil was in 2016 which seems odd.

As of 13 Aug 2018, the last update to dateutil was 2 days ago. And the last official release to PyPI, version 2.7.3, was 3 months ago.

So, your secondary problem doesn't exist either.

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So my question is which one would you recommend for adding and substracting dates and datetimes and switching between string and datetime obj?

Since dateutil just gives you the same datetime objects that datetime gives you, neither one is better for adding and subtracting dates and datetimes.

For converting to and from string format, sometimes dateutil is more convenient, and it also supports a wider range of formats that you don't care about—but for what you're doing, they both work fine, so there's no difference. If you expect to need other formats in the future, it might be worth bringing in dateutil, but if not, you might as well stick with the standard library.

Answer 2

dateutil last version (2.7.3) is in may 2018. It just says "copyright 2016" somewhere in the credits. Moreover, the documentation talks about policy for future versions, so it seems to be quite active. I would suggest to prefer it over strptime. However, be sure to get the latest version. Previous versions had a bug with converting ISO dates, with which you are working.