Convert string into datetime.time object

Question

Given the string in this format "HH:MM", for example "03:55", that represents 3 hours and 55 minutes.

I want to convert it to datetime.time object for easier manipulation. What would be the easiest way to do that?

Answer 1

Use datetime.datetime.strptime() and call .time() on the result:

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('03:55', '%H:%M').time()
datetime.time(3, 55)

The first argument to .strptime() is the string to parse, the second is the expected format.

Answer 2

>>> datetime.time(*map(int, '03:55'.split(':')))
datetime.time(3, 55)

Answer 3

It is perhaps less clear to future readers, but the *map method is more than 10 times faster. See below and make an informed decision in your code. If calling this check many times and speed matters, go with the generator ("map").

In [31]: timeit(datetime.strptime('15:00', '%H:%M').time())
7.76 µs ± 111 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)


In [28]: timeit(dtime(*map(int, SHUTDOWN_AT.split(':'))))
696 ns ± 11.5 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)