python 2.7 - conversion of datetime Field to string in django queryset.values_list()

Question

I have a queryset like:

qs = MyModel.objects.filter(name='me').values_list('activation_date')

here activation_date is DateTimeField in models. When I download excel sheet from this qs I am not getting activation date in string format. How can I convert this field('activation_date') in string or how to typecast it in qs?

Answer 1

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/models/fields/#datetimefield

A date and time, represented in Python by a datetime.datetime instance.

You can get a string representation of a DateTimeField casting it directly:

str(obj)
# obj = qs[0][0] ? or qs[0][1] ?

You'll get result like this (in this example I use datetime.datetime.now() since a DateTimeField is represented by datetime.datetime is the same behavior):

>>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> str(now)
'2013-06-26 00:14:26.260524'

if you want less information or formatted in other mode you can use strftime() function for format them. see:

>>> now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')
'2013-06-26 00:14'