topic Re: Convert Time Field in Python Questions

Convert Time Field

AdamBeard — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 11:10:11 GMT

This tool seems very strait forward but is causing issues when put into python. Works fine in ArcMap and I get the expected results.

My Input Time Field(Text Field) looks like:
2014-02-01 02:11 AM

inputTimeField = "Incident_Date___Time"
inputTimeFormat = "1033;yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm tt"
outputDateField = "IncDateTime"
arcpy.ConvertTimeField_management("myFGDB",inputTimeField,inputTimeFormat,outputDateField)
arcpy.DeleteField_management(blot,"DateTime")

After the tool is run the IncDateTime Field comes back as:
1/1/2001

Am I missing something here?

Re: Convert Time Field

JakeSkinner — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 12:17:35 GMT

Hi Adam,

A good trick to get the syntax correct is to run the tool in ArcMap, then open the Results window (Geoprocessing menu > Results). Right-click on the completed tool > Copy As Python Snippet. You can then paste this into your script.

Re: Convert Time Field

David_JAnderson — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 19:58:23 GMT

I would suggest looking at the python datetime module. It will do anything you can think of for manipulating date and time values.

Re: Convert Time Field

TimothyElliott — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 02:04:30 GMT

Just a word of warning In a file geodatabase the date and times are all stored as unicode strings, and you need to specify that when manipulating them with Python.

  time_value.encode('utf-8'), "%d/%m/%Y %I:%M:%S %p")