python / django strptime "bad directive"

Question

I'm trying to convert a string into a date object, I have this line of code:

datetime.strptime('01/04/2014', '%d/%m%/%y')

And I get:

ValueError: '/' is a bad directive in format '%d/%m%/%y'

I have tried changing / with other characters and also no separator but it throws up the same error (for that character)

Django 1.5.1 Python 2.7.3

Any idea what this means? Google doesn't throw up many results for the same problem.

Answer 1

You have one % too many after the %m directive; %/ is not a valid directive and the ValueError tells you just that.

Use:

datetime.strptime('01/04/2014', '%d/%m/%Y')

instead, using %Y (capital Y) to parse a year with century.

Demo:

>>> datetime.strptime('01/04/2014', '%d/%m/%Y')
datetime.datetime(2014, 4, 1, 0, 0)