How to convert date to datetime in Python?

In this article, we will discuss how to convert a date to a datetime object in python.

We use the combine method from the datetime module to combine a date and time object to create a datetime object.

Syntax

The syntax of combine() method is as follows.

datetime.combine(date,time)

Where,

• date is a date object.
• time is a time object.

This method returns a datetime object which is the combination of the above two objects(date,time).

Converting a date object to datetime object

If we have a date object and don't have a time object, then you initialize the time object to a minimum using the datetime object (Minimum means at midnight i.e 00:00:00).

Example

In the below example code, we combine a date object is retrieved by using the today() method and we initialized the time object to minimum time(00:00:00) using the min.time() method. And combined these two objects by applying the datetime.combine() method.

from datetime import date
from datetime import datetime
my_date = date.today()
print("The date object:",my_date)
my_time = datetime.min.time()
print("The time object:",my_time)
my_datetime = datetime.combine(my_date, my_time)
print("The combined datetime object:",my_datetime)

Output

The output of the above code is as follows.

The date object: 2022-05-19
The time object: 00:00:00
The combined datetime object: 2022-05-19 00:00:00

When both date and time objects are given

Here, we initialize both date and time objects. And combine these into a datetime object using the combine method.

Example

In this example, we will convert a datetime object when both date and time objects are given.

import datetime
my_date = datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 12)
print("The date object:",my_date)
my_time = datetime.time(1, 30)
print("The time object:",my_time)
combined_datetime = my_date.combine(my_date, my_time)
print("The combined datetime object:",combined_datetime)

Output

The output of the above code is as follows;

The date object: 2012-02-12 00:00:00
The time object: 01:30:00
The combined datetime object: 2012-02-12 01:30:00

Using the datetime()

The datetime() constructor in python accepts year, month and date values as parameters and create a datetime object.

Pass the year, month and day values of the desired date object (as my_date.year, my_date.month, my_date.day) to this constructor to convert a date object to datetime object.

Example

from datetime import date
from datetime import datetime
my_date = date.today()
my_datetime = datetime(my_date.year, my_date.month, my_date.day)
print(my_datetime)

Output

2022-09-05 00:00:00