How do I strftime a date object in a different locale?

Question

I have a date object in python and I need to generate a time stamp in the C locale for a legacy system, using the %a (weekday) and %b (month) codes. However I do not wish to

Answer 1

No, there is no way to call strftime() with a specific locale.

Assuming that your app is not multi-threaded, save and restore the existing locale, and set your locale to 'C' when you invoke strftime.

#! /usr/bin/python3
import time
import locale


def get_c_locale_abbrev():
  lc = locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME)
  try:
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, "C")
    return time.strftime("%a-%b")
  finally:
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, lc)

# Let's suppose that we're french
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR.utf8')

# Should print french, english, then french
print(time.strftime('%a-%b'))
print(get_c_locale_abbrev())
print(time.strftime('%a-%b'))

---

If you prefer with: to try:-finally:, you could whip up a context manager:

#! /usr/bin/python3
import time
import locale
import contextlib

@contextlib.contextmanager
def setlocale(*args, **kw):
  saved = locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL)
  yield locale.setlocale(*args, **kw)
  locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, saved)

def get_c_locale_abbrev():
  with setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, "C"):
    return time.strftime("%a-%b")

# Let's suppose that we're french
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR.utf8')

# Should print french, english, then french
print(time.strftime('%a-%b'))
print(get_c_locale_abbrev())
print(time.strftime('%a-%b'))