datetime TypeError: 'datetime.datetime' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

Question

What am I doing wrong here?

import datetime

someday = datetime.datetime(2014, 9, 23, 0, 0)

someday = datetime.datetime.strptime(someday[:10], '%Y-%m-%d')
print someday

Error:

TypeError: 'datetime.datetime' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

Answer 1

someday is a datetime object, which does not support slicing. So, doing someday[:10] raises a TypeError.

You need to convert someday into a string before you slice it:

someday = datetime.datetime.strptime(str(someday)[:10], '%Y-%m-%d')

Demo:

>>> import datetime
>>> someday = datetime.datetime(2014, 9, 23, 0, 0)
>>>
>>> someday  # This is a datetime object
datetime.datetime(2014, 9, 23, 0, 0)
>>> someday[:10] # Does not support slicing
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'datetime.datetime' object has no attribute '__getitem__'
>>>
>>> str(someday) # This returns a string
'2014-09-23 00:00:00'
>>> str(someday)[:10] # Supports slicing
'2014-09-23'
>>>