Question

What is the best way to convert the following date pattern to a datetime.date object in Python?

1st April
8th April
15th April
1st May

Answer 1

dateutil.parser will parse almost every known date format:

from dateutil.parser import parse
parse('8th April')

To always get a date in the future:

from dateutil.parser import parse
from datetime import datetime

d = parse('8th April')
if (d - datetime.now()).days <= 0:
    d = datetime.date(d.year+1, d.month, d.day)