Question

I am creating a module in python, in which I am receiving the date in integer format like 20120213, which signifies the 13th of Feb, 2012. Now, I want to convert this integer formatted date into a python date object.

Also, if there is any means by which I can subtract/add the number of days in such integer formatted date to receive the date value in same format? like subtracting 30 days from 20120213 and receive answer as 20120114?

Answer 1

I would suggest the following simple approach for conversion:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
s = "20120213"
# you could also import date instead of datetime and use that.
date = datetime(year=int(s[0:4]), month=int(s[4:6]), day=int(s[6:8]))

For adding/subtracting an arbitary amount of days (seconds work too btw.), you could do the following:

date += timedelta(days=10)
date -= timedelta(days=5)

And convert back using:

s = date.strftime("%Y%m%d")

To convert the integer to a string safely, use:

s = "{0:-08d}".format(i)

This ensures that your string is eight charecters long and left-padded with zeroes, even if the year is smaller than 1000 (negative years could become funny though).

Further reference: datetime objects, timedelta objects