The Techno–Bird Box, a Wildlife Monitor - Raspberry Pi Projects - page 430

Formatting the Current Time
he function getFormattedTime() is used to get the current time and format it. Looking
inside the function, you'll see that the variable now gets a datetime.datetime object con-
taining the current date and time:

now = datetime.datetime.now()

he method strftime is called with an argument that speciies how the current time is
formatted:

return now.strftime(“%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S. “) + ;
str(int(round(now.microsecond/1000.0)))

he format argument provides a template of codes in a string. When the program runs, the
codes in Table 17-1 are replaced by diferent parts of the date and time stored by the object.

Table 17-1 Date-Formatting Codes
Code Meaning English Example

Shortened weekday name Mon

%a

%A

Full weekday name Monday

%b

Shortened month name Mar

Full month name March %B

%d

Day of the month 14

%H

Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number 18

Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number 6

%I

%m

Month as decimal number 03

%M

Minute 15

AM or PM (or local equivalent description) PM %p

%S

Second 12

%y

Two-digit year 13

Four-digit year 2013 %Y

%%

Use to display a single % sign %

Different places around the world have different conventions; for example, the 14th of March in the
U.K. would be written as 14/03, but in the U.S. as 03/14. Linux locale sets the various settings like
these that are unique to a particular place in the world. For example, it also deines the currency
used, default paper size and keyboard layout. strftime uses your locale setting to determine
what %p displays. It also uses it to make %c format the date and time appropriately for you.