How to Fix the Python AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’

In this article, I’ll show how to solve the AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’ in Python programming.

The content of the post looks as follows:

If you want to know more about these topics, keep reading…

Creation of Example Data

We’ll use the following data as a basis for this Python tutorial:

x = '2022-10-10'                            # Creating example date as string
print(x)                                    # Print example date
# 2022-10-10

As you can see, based on the previously shown output of the Python console, our example data is shown as string.

Example 1: Reproduce the AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’

In this example, I’ll explain how to replicate the output error AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’.

For this, we’ll also need to import the datetime module to Python:

import datetime                             # Load datetime module

If we now want to apply the strptime function, we unfortunately receive the following output:

datetime.strptime(x, '%Y-%m-%d')            # strptime function does not work
# AttributeError: module 'datetime' has no attribute 'strptime'

Let’s try to solve this error message!

Example 2: Fix the AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’

This example demonstrates how to debug the Python AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’.

The problem in the first example occurred because we applied “import datetime” instead of “from datetime import datetime”.

from datetime import datetime               # Import datetime

So with the right import, considering the code above, we can now use the strptime function once again and this time we receive no more error messages.

x_new = datetime.strptime(x, '%Y-%m-%d')    # strptime function works fine
print(x_new)                                # Print datetime object
# 2022-10-10 00:00:00

Look’s great!

Video & Further Resources

Would you like to learn more about the handling of the AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’? Then you may want to have a look at the following video instruction on my YouTube channel. I’m explaining the Python syntax of this post in the video.

In addition, you could have a look at the related articles about dates and times on this website. Some tutorials are shown below:

• Type object datetime has no attribute in Python
• Convert String to datetime Object in Python
• Convert datetime Object to Date Only String in Python
• Convert datetime Object to Seconds, Minutes & Hours in Python
• Python Programming Overview

Summary: At this point of the article you should know how to get rid off the AttributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘strptime’ in Python. Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments section below, in case you have further questions.

This page was created in collaboration with Matthias Bäuerlen. Have a look at Matthias’ author page to get more information about his professional background, a list of all his tutorials, as well as an overview on his other tasks on Statistics Globe.