How do I parse an HTTP date-string in Python?

Question

Is there an easy way to parse HTTP date-strings in Python? According to the standard, there are several ways to format HTTP date strings; the method should be able to handle this.

In other words, I want to convert a string like "Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:15:29 GMT" to a python time-structure.

Answer 1

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:15:29 GMT', '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT')
datetime.datetime(2009, 9, 23, 22, 15, 29)

Answer 2

>>> import email.utils as eut
>>> eut.parsedate('Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:15:29 GMT')
(2009, 9, 23, 22, 15, 29, 0, 1, -1)

If you want a datetime.datetime object, you can do:

def my_parsedate(text):
    return datetime.datetime(*eut.parsedate(text)[:6])