topic Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name in Python Questions

Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

joshwheeler1 — Thu, 30 May 2013 12:47:45 GMT

Hello,

I have a script that exports my .mxd to a .pdf and a .png and I would like to add a Unique Name to the exported maps so everytime the script runs the exports don't get overwritten.

I would like to have the date included in the exported documents name. My idea was to add time.asctime() to the title but I can't seem to get that to work.

Any ideas would be very appreciated.

Thanks,
Josh

Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

MathewCoyle — Thu, 30 May 2013 14:13:17 GMT

I usually do something like this.

stamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y_%M_%d_%H%M%S")

Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

joshwheeler1 — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:19:38 GMT

Just what I needed, thanks a lot.

Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

RhettZufelt — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:38:51 GMT

That works if you want year_Minutes_day_hour_minutes_seconds.
If you want Month_Day_year, something like this works:

>>> from time import strftime
>>> stamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y_%M_%d_%H%M%S")
>>> stamp
'2013_56_30_155604'
>>> 
>>> dt = strftime("%m_%d_%Y %H:%M:%S")
>>> dt
'05_30_2013 15:56:17'
>>> 
>>> dt = strftime("%m_%d_%Y")
>>> dt
'05_30_2013'

Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

MathewCoyle — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:10:18 GMT

Ah yes small typo, rhett is right, should be %m for month. Though date formats are always year_month_day.

Re: Exporting to PDF with a Unique Name

RhettZufelt — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:31:20 GMT

strftime actually has a bunch of directives you can use. See here for the list http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/time_strftime.htm

R_