What is the python data type for Google Bigquery's TIMESTAMP?

Question

I'm loading data into Google's BigQuery using the google-cloud-python library as found here:

http://google-cloud-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Part of it involves checking the data types of the data I'm importing to ensure they match the datatypes in the schema for the target table. To do this I convert a python object type to the GBQ equivalent:

import datetime 

def convert_type_to_bigquery(object_type):
    if isinstance(object_type, str):
        return 'STRING'
    elif isinstance(object_type, bytes):
        return 'BYTES'
    elif isinstance(object_type, int):
        return 'INTEGER'
    elif isinstance(object_type, float):
        return 'FLOAT'
    elif isinstance(object_type, bool):
        return 'BOOLEAN'
    elif isinstance(object_type, datetime.date):
        return 'DATE'
    elif isinstance(object_type, datetime.time):
        return 'TIME'
    elif isinstance(object_type, datetime.datetime):
        return 'DATETIME'
    elif isinstance(object_type, ???):
        return 'TIMESTAMP'
    else:
        return None

I can find equivalents for all but the TIMESTAMP type. Is there an equivalent I can use in isinstance()?

Answer 1

You can do print(type(object_type)) with the TIMESTAMP object to be sure but, according to this github page, it looks like it's just datetime.datetime:

...
Date = datetime.date
Time = datetime.time
Timestamp = datetime.datetime
...

I must say, the main reason I wanted to add an answer was to point out a common error with ìsinstance(...). This won't work since bool is an instance of int:

elif isinstance(object_type, int):
    return 'INTEGER'
elif isinstance(object_type, float):
    return 'FLOAT'
elif isinstance(object_type, bool):
    return 'BOOLEAN'

Look at this example:

>>> isinstance(True, int)
True

You need to use elif type(object_type) is int: or place the check for bool first.