Convert date to datetime in Python

Question

Silly question, but is there a built-in method for converting a date to a datetime in Python, ie. getting the datetime for the midnight of the date? The opposite conversion is easy - datetime has a .date() method. Do I really have to manually call datetime(d.year, d.month, d.day) ?

Edit: and the winner is:

datetime.combine(d, time())

Answer 1

There are several ways, although I do believe the one you mention (and dislike) is the most readable one.

>>> t=datetime.date.today()
>>> datetime.datetime.fromordinal(t.toordinal())
datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0)
>>> datetime.datetime(t.year, t.month, t.day)
datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0)
>>> datetime.datetime(*t.timetuple()[:-4])
datetime.datetime(2009, 12, 20, 0, 0)

and so forth -- but basically they all hinge on appropriately extracting info from the date object and ploughing it back into the suitable ctor or classfunction for datetime.

Answer 2

yeah, you pretty much do. you can use the timetuple() method and varargs though:

datetime.datetime(*(d.timetuple()[:6]))

Answer 3

You can use datetime.combine(date, time); for the time you create a datetime.time object initialized to midnight.