Parsing a date that can be in several formats in python

Question

I would like to parse a date that can come in several formats, that I know beforehand. If I could not parse, I return nil. In ruby, I do like this:

DATE_FORM         


        

Answer 1

I would just try dateutil. It can recognize most of the formats:

from dateutil import parser
parser.parse(string)

if you end up using datetime.strptime as suggested @RocketDonkey:

from datetime import datetime

def func(s,flist):
    for f in flist:
        try:
            return datetime.strptime(s,f)
        except ValueError:
            pass