Convert unicode to datetime proper strptime format

Question

I am trying to convert a unicode object to a datetime object.

I read through the documentation: http://docs.python.org/2/library/time.html#time.strptime

and tried

datetime.strptime(date_posted, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ') 

but I get the error message ValueError: time data '2014-01-15T01:35:30.314Z' does not match format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ'

Any feedback on what is the proper format?

I appreciate the time and expertise.

Answer 1

You can parse the microseconds:

from datetime import datetime
date_posted = '2014-01-15T01:35:30.314Z'
datetime.strptime(date_posted, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')

Answer 2

One option is to let dateutil do the job:

>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> parser.parse('2014-01-15T01:35:30.314Z')
datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 15, 1, 35, 30, 314000, tzinfo=tzutc())