Getting a valid datetime format from a string

Question

I have this code in a class that gets a string, parses it, and makes some adjustments to get a valid datetime format from the string.

An input string for this function could be = "A0X031716506774"

import datetime
def _eventdatetime(self, string):
 base_date = datetime.datetime.strptime("1980-1-6 0:0", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")
 weeks = datetime.timedelta(weeks = int(string[5:9]))
 days = datetime.timedelta(days = int(string[9]))
 seconds = datetime.timedelta(seconds = int(string[10:15]))
 stamp = base_date + weeks + days + seconds
 adjustUTC = datetime.timedelta(hours = 3) 
 stamp = stamp - adjustUTC
 return str(stamp)

Total time: 0.0483931 s

How can I improve the performance for this? The third line seems to be the slowest.

Answer 1

import datetime
def _eventdatetime(self, string):
 base_date = datetime.datetime.strptime("1980-1-6 0:0", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")

Why are you specifying the date as a string only to parse it? Just do: base_date = datetime.datetime(1980,1,6,0,0). You should also make it a global constant so as not to recreate it all the time.

 weeks = datetime.timedelta(weeks = int(string[5:9]))
 days = datetime.timedelta(days = int(string[9]))
 seconds = datetime.timedelta(seconds = int(string[10:15]))

There is no need to create several timedelta objects, you can do datetime.timedelta(weeks = ..., days = ..., seconds = ...)

 stamp = base_date + weeks + days + seconds
 adjustUTC = datetime.timedelta(hours = 3) 
 stamp = stamp - adjustUTC

I'd use stamp -= datetime.timedelta(hours = 3) # adjust for UTC

 return str(stamp)

• chespinoza: Thanks for your time Winston! Your advise is very useful.