datetime - Python parsing date and find the correct locale_setting

Question

I have the following date string: '3 févr. 2015 14:26:00 CET'

datetime.datetime.strptime('03 févr. 2015 14:26:00', '%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')

Parsing this failed with the error:

ValueError: time data '03 fxc3xa9vr. 2015 14:26:00' does not match format '%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S'

I tried to loop over all locales with locale.locale_alias:

for l in locale.locale_alias:
    try:
        locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, l)
        print l,datetime.datetime.strptime('03 févr. 2015 14:26:00', '%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')
        break
    except Exception as e:
        print e

but I was not able to find the correct one.

Answer 1

To parse localized date/time string using ICU date/time format:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from datetime import datetime
import icu  # PyICU
import pytz # $ pip install pytz

tz = icu.ICUtzinfo.getDefault() # any ICU timezone will do here
df = icu.DateFormat.createDateTimeInstance(icu.DateFormat.MEDIUM,
                                           icu.DateFormat.MEDIUM,
                                           icu.Locale.getFrench())
df.setTimeZone(tz.timezone)

ts = df.parse(u'3 févr. 2015 14:26:00 CET') #NOTE: CET is ignored
naive_dt = datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz).replace(tzinfo=None)
dt = pytz.timezone('Europe/Paris').localize(naive_dt, is_dst=None)
print(dt) # -> 2015-02-03 14:26:00+01:00

df.applyPattern() could be used to set a different date/time pattern (df.toPattern()) or you could use icu.SimpleDateFormat to get df from the format and the locale directly.

It is necessary to use an explicit ICU timezone (so that df.parse() and .fromtimestamp() could use the same utc offset) because icu and datetime may use different timezone definitions.

pytz is used here, to get a proper UTC offset for past/future dates (some timezones may have different utc offsets in the past/future including reasons unrelated to DST transitions).