Localized month name in Python

Question

I'd like to have localized months name automatically given by Python.

I use this piece of code : datetime.datetime.strptime(j, "%m").strftime("%B") where j is the month number.

My problem is that it keeps giving me "January" while I'm expecting "Janvier" (french locale).

I tried to play a little with locale and the only way I found to make it work is to call locale.set_locale(locale.LC_ALL, "") at the begining of the script.

Is it the good way to go ? Or is there any problem and nicer solutions ?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you have your locale set at the OS level,

locale.set_locale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
print locale.nl_langinfo(locale.LC_MON1)

"janvier"

Or you can set it at python level:

 locale.set_locale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR')
 print locale.nl_langinfo(locale.LC_MON1)

 "janvier"

Answer 2

If you only wan't it to affect the datetime function try this:

def getLocalizedMonth(j):
  locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "")
  datetime.datetime.strptime(j, "%m").strftime("%B")
  locale.setlocale(locale.getdefaultlocale())

And yes I think using the locale.setlocale is the best solution!