Parse French date in python

Question

Can someone please tell me how can I parse a French date in Python? Sorry if the question is a duplicate but I couldn\'t find one.

Here is what I have tried using t

Answer 1

First check whether you have the correct locale in your repo:

$ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
de_AT.utf8
de_BE.utf8
de_CH.utf8
de_DE.utf8
de_LI.utf8
de_LU.utf8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

If not, do:

$ sudo locale-gen fr_FR.UTF-8
Generating locales...
  fr_FR.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

Then go back to python:

$ python
>>> import locale
>>> import datetime
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'fr_FR.UTF-8')
'fr_FR.UTF-8'
>>>
>>> date_txt = "Dimanche 3 Juin 2012"
>>> DATE_FORMAT = "%A %d %B %Y"
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime(date_txt, DATE_FORMAT)
datetime.datetime(2012, 6, 3, 0, 0)
>>>

To use customize date format:

>>> date_txt = "3 juillet"
>>> DATE_FORMAT = "%d %B"
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime(date_txt, DATE_FORMAT)
datetime.datetime(1900, 7, 3, 0, 0)

You'll realized that if the year is underspecified it's set to default at 1900.