Specify format for input arguments argparse python

Question

I have a python script that requires some command line inputs and I am using argparse for parsing them. I found the documentation a bit confusing and couldn\'t find a way to

Answer 1

For others who hit this via search engines: in Python 3.7, you can use the standard .fromisoformat class method instead of reinventing the wheel for ISO-8601 compliant dates, e.g.:

parser.add_argument('-s', "--startdate",
    help="The Start Date - format YYYY-MM-DD",
    required=True,
    type=datetime.date.fromisoformat)
parser.add_argument('-e', "--enddate",
    help="The End Date format YYYY-MM-DD (Inclusive)",
    required=True,
    type=datetime.date.fromisoformat)