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Python SQLAlchemy Basics Working with SQLAlchemy Cleaning Data

Posted by Ozzy Robledo
Ozzy Robledo
6,288 Points

clean_date() function

I wrote this much less complicated function for cleaning the date and am curious if there is a reason something like this wasn't used? Am I missing something? 

def clean_date(date_string):  
    date_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_str, '%B %d, %Y').date()  
    return date_obj

Just curious, Thanks!

2 Answers

Megan Amendola
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STAFF
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Megan Amendola
Treehouse Teacher
Megan Amendola
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Megan Amendola
Treehouse Teacher

Hi! Sorry for the late reply :) Try running the function with a date that doesn't exist like clean_date('June 31, 2020'). Your function will throw an error. You'll want to move that into a try block to catch that error and make sure the user inputs a date that exists. You may think "Why would someone input a date that doesn't exist?" but from the database and spreadsheet cleaning I've done, you'd be surprised how often that happens. If I remember right, I wanted to make sure the date was 1) in the right format so I could do the conversion from a string to a DateTime and 2) make sure the date existed. If you run clean_date('06-14-2020') you'll also get an error since the date isn't in the format ('%B %d, %Y') your code said it would be in. I hope that helps!

Ozzy Robledo
Ozzy Robledo
6,288 Points
Ozzy Robledo
Ozzy Robledo
6,288 Points

When I wrote the above code I was not to the point where we fixed errors from incorrect input. Here is my updated function:

def clean_date(date_str):  
    while True:  
        try:  
            date_object = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_str, '%B %d, %Y').date()  
            return date_object  
        except ValueError:  
            print('''  
            \n***DATE ERROR***  
            \rIncorrect date format. Use example below:  
            \r"January 1, 2020"''')  
            date_str = input('please enter date: ')

This handles any incorrectly formatted input.