I have dates in my attribute table that are stored as strings – they look like 02/22/2012 (mm/dd/yyyy) – and I would like to convert them to Date type. When I try to input a custom date format in the Convert Time Field geoprocessing tool it returns in all the records and I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I've tried MM/dd/yyyy and MMddyyyy – is there something I'm missing about setting up a custom date format? Or, is there another way I can do this?
[GIS] Why does ArcGIS 10 Convert Time Field geoprocessing tool return when using custom format
arcgis-10.0arcgis-desktopconverttime
Related Solutions
GP cursors read date values as datetime objects, so you can use datetime.strftime() to format it as you like, or datetime.ctime() to format it as the default format (%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y).
Here's an example using mm/dd/yyyy:
import arcpy
from datetime import datetime
fc = r"C:\GISData\test.gdb\atlantic_hurricanes_2000"
rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(fc)
for row in rows:
datetimeVal = row.getValue("Date_Time")
formattedTime = datetime.strftime(datetimeVal, "%m/%d/%Y")
print formattedTime
For the meanings of the various time formatting codes see strftime behavior.
You don't need to create an extra field to do this. The workflow in Arcgis desktop is as the following:
1- Make a selection (Dates Over 2013) and export to a separate shape file.
2- Revert the selection and export to a separate shape file.
Snapshots in ArcGIS:
Best Answer
I created a shapefile with a string field with dates in the 02/22/2012 format and was able to convert it using the "Convert Time Field" tool after a couple tries. On my successful attempt I created a new field of type date and then ran the date conversion tool. For the custom format I used "MM/dd/yyyy". I also specified the newly created date field as the output time field. I checked the method with errors in the strings and even a string like "2/5/12" was converted to 2/5/2012. (My initial failures came because I assumed the tool would create a new date field for me, that didn't happen during my test.)
I hope this helps.