Python's time format codes

Directive	Meaning	Example
%a	Weekday as locale’s abbreviated name.	Sun, Mon, ..., Sat (en_US); So, Mo, ..., Sa (de_DE)
%A	Weekday as locale’s full name.	Sunday, Monday, ..., Saturday (en_US); Sonntag, Montag, ..., Samstag (de_DE)
%w	Weekday as a decimal number, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday.	0, 1, ..., 6
%d	Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number.	01, 02, ..., 31
%b	Month as locale’s abbreviated name.	Jan, Feb, ..., Dec (en_US); Jan, Feb, ..., Dez (de_DE)
%B	Month as locale’s full name.	January, February, ..., December (en_US); Januar, Februar, ..., Dezember (de_DE)
%m	Month as a zero-padded decimal number.	01, 02, ..., 12
%y	Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, ..., 99
%Y	Year with century as a decimal number.	1970, 1988, 2001, 2013
%H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, ..., 23
%I	Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number.	01, 02, ..., 12
%p	Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM.	AM, PM (en_US); am, pm (de_DE)
%M	Minute as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, ..., 59
%S	Second as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, ..., 59
%f	Microsecond as a decimal number, zero-padded on the left.	000000, 000001, ..., 999999
%z	UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty string if the the object is naive).	(empty), +0000, -0400, +1030
%Z	Time zone name (empty string if the object is naive).	(empty), UTC, EST, CST
%j	Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal number.	001, 002, ..., 366
%U	Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a zero padded decimal number. All days in a new year preceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.	00, 01, ..., 53
%W	Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number. All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0.	00, 01, ..., 53
%c	Locale’s appropriate date and time representation.	Tue Aug 16 21:30:00 1988 (en_US); Di 16 Aug 21:30:00 1988 (de_DE)
%x	Locale’s appropriate date representation.	08/16/88 (None); 08/16/1988 (en_US); 16.08.1988 (de_DE)
%X	Locale’s appropriate time representation.	21:30:00 (en_US); 21:30:00 (de_DE)
%%	A literal '%' character.	%

How to loop through a python list

Code

mylist = ['apples','bananas', 'oranges']               #1
for item in mylist                                     #2
    print item                                         #3

How this works - Line by Line

mylist = ['apples','bananas', 'oranges']          #1

Creates a list (which i have defined as mylist) of three strings -- apples, bananas, and oranges.
Lists are created by [ ]  and items in the list are separated by commas.  

for item in mylist                                #2

    print item                                    #3

These lines loop through the items in the list.  The word 'item' is arbitrary and could be replaced by any other word.  For example, the following would do the same.

for arbitraryword in mylist                                

    print arbitraryword

How to print out the current date time in the format mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss

Code

import time                                          #1
print time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S")             #2

How this works - Line by Line

import time                                    #1

Imports the time module which is standard

print time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S")       #2

Prints the date and time in "MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS" format.
Note that the code is case sensitive.

How to get today's date in MM/DD/YYYY format

Code

import time                           #1
print time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y")       #2

How this works - Line by Line

import time                           #1

Imports the time module which is standard

print time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y")       #2

Prints the date in "MM/DD/YYYY" format. Note the lower case m and d and upper case Y.

How to get today's date in MMDDYYYY format

Code

import time                           #1
print time.strftime("%m%d%Y")         #2

How this works - Line by Line

import time                           #1

Imports the time module which is standard

print time.strftime("%m%d%Y")         #2

Prints the date in "MMDDYYYY" format. Note the lower case m and d and upper case Y.

How to download images from craigslist

Code

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
from urllib2 import urlopen

site = "http://sfbay.craigslist.org/rea/"
table = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(site))
items = table('p')
linkdict = {}
i = 0
for item in items[:-1]:
    i=i+1
    itempostlink = item('a')[0]['href']
    itemlink = site[:-5] + itempostlink
    linkdict[i] = itemlink

for i, link in linkdict.iteritems():
    print i, linkdict[i]
    images = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(linkdict[i]))('img')
    imagecounter = 0
    for image in images:
        imagecounter +=1
        image_url =image['src']
        print image_url
        image = urlopen(image_url)
        local = open("c:\\temp\\"+str(i)+"."+str(imagecounter)+".jpg",'wb')
        local.write(image.read())
        local.close()
    print

How to get BeautifulSoup to filter Craigslist HTML

Code

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup                       #1
from urllib2 import urlopen                                   #2

site = "http://sfbay.craigslist.org/rea/"                     #3 
table = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(site))                          #4 
items = table('p')                                            #5
for item in items[:-1]:                                       #6 
    itempostlink = item('a')[0]['href']                       #7
    itemlink = site[:-5] + itempostlink                       #8
    print itemlink                                            #9
    soup = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(itemlink))                   #10
    body = soup('div',{'id':"userbody"})[0].contents[0]       #11
    print body                                                #12

How it works - Line by line

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup                       #1
from urllib2 import urlopen                                   #2

site = "http://sfbay.craigslist.org/rea/"                     #3 
table = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(site))                          #4 
items = table('p')                                            #5

Please see my postings on how to screen scrape craigslist for details on lines #1-#5

for item in items[:-1]:                                       #6

The last item of this resultset is disregarded as it is not a posting.

    itempostlink = item('a')[0]['href']                       #7

This will get the link for each item from the href tag

    itemlink = site[:-5] + itempostlink                       #8

This appends #7 to the truncated base site link

    print itemlink                                            #9

This displays the full link to the craigslist item

    soup = BeautifulSoup(urlopen(itemlink))                   #10

This loads the craigslist item link into BeautifulSoup

    body = soup('div',{'id':"userbody"})[0].contents[0]       #11

This extracts the body contents from the item link html

    print body                                                #12

This prints the body contents