Convert Date to yyyymmdd string in field calculator with Python

NealBanerjee

Hello,

I am stuck with syntax for what I think will be very easy task.  I have a feature class with a date field that I simply want to convert to a string field in yyyymmdd format, so that I can combine it with other fields to create a unique ID. 

Id like to do this in a simple field calculator (in ArcMap) session with python

I tried using the strftime method with simple expression but that doesnt work   !mydatefield!.strftime('%Y%m%d').  I also tried a few other things but keep getting error

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Neal

bixb0012

It always helps to provide the specific errors and tracebacks you are getting.  There are so many possible errors that just saying you are getting an error isn't helpful.

In ArcMap, cursors and the field calculator return date fields as text/unicode, so you have to be aware of that when trying to process the date information.  So you may need something like:

<SPAN class="punctuation token">(</SPAN>datetime<SPAN class="punctuation token">.</SPAN>datetime<SPAN class="punctuation token">.</SPAN>strptime<SPAN class="punctuation token">(</SPAN> !DateField!<SPAN class="punctuation token">,</SPAN><SPAN class="string token">'%m/%d/%Y'</SPAN><SPAN class="punctuation token">)</SPAN><SPAN class="punctuation token">)</SPAN><SPAN class="punctuation token">.</SPAN>strftime<SPAN class="punctuation token">(</SPAN><SPAN class="string token">'%Y%m%d'</SPAN><SPAN class="punctuation token">)</SPAN><SPAN class="line-numbers-rows"><SPAN>‍</SPAN></SPAN>