How can I validate a date in Python 3.x?

Question

I would like to have the user input a date, something like:

date = input('Date (m/dd/yyyy): ')

and then make sure that the input is a valid date. I don't really care that much about the date format.

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

You can use the time module's strptime() function:

import time
date = input('Date (m/dd/yyyy): ')
try:
  valid_date = time.strptime(date, '%m/%d/%Y')
except ValueError:
  print('Invalid date!')

Answer 2

Max S.,

Thanks for the code. Here is how I implemented it:

while True:
    date = input('Date (m/dd/yyyy): ')
        try:
            date = time.strptime(date, '%m/%d/%Y')
            break
        except ValueError:
            print('Invalid date!')
            continue