How to get formatted date and time in Python?

You can get formatted date and time using strftime function. It accepts a format string that you can use to get your desired output. Following are the directives supported by it.

Directive	Meaning
%a	Locale's abbreviated weekday name
%A	Locale's full weekday name
%b	Locale's abbreviated month name.
%B	Locale's full month name.
%c	Locale's appropriate date and time representation.
%d	Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
%H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].
%I	Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].
%m	Month as a decimal number [01,12].
%M	Minute as a decimal number [00,59].
%p	Locale's equivalent of either AM or PM.
%S	Second as a decimal number [00,61].
%U	Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.
%w	Weekday as a decimal number [0(Sunday),6].
%W	Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0.
%x	Locale's appropriate date representation.
%X	Locale's appropriate time representation.
%y	Year without century as a decimal number [00,99].
%Y	Year with century as a decimal number.
%Z	Time zone name (no characters if no time zone exists).
%%	A literal "%" character.

You can use these directives in the strftime function as follows −

Example

import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
print("Current date and time: ")
print(now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
print(now.strftime('%H:%M:%S on %A, %B the %dth, %Y'))

Output

This will give the output −

2017-12-29 12:19:13
12:19:13 on Friday, December the 29th, 2017