How to go from human readable date format ('YYYY-MM-DD') to datetime format string ("%Y-%m-%d")

I would like to allow the user to specify the date format using a human readable format like 'YYYY-MM-DD'. But then I need to actually parse dates so I need the corresponding actual datetime format '%Y-%m-%d'. Is there a way go from the first to the second?

You can use a dictionary to convert human readable format or your custom format to strftime.

import datetime


def human_to_strftime(human_format):
    format_mapping = {
        'YYYY': '%Y',
        'YY': '%y',
        'MM': '%m',
        'DD': '%d',
        'HH': '%H',
        'MI': '%M',
        'SS': '%S',
        'AM/PM': '%p'
    }
    strftime_format = human_format
    for human, strftime in format_mapping.items():
        strftime_format = strftime_format.replace(human, strftime)
    return strftime_format


if __name__ == "__main__":
    date = "2024-07-09"
    date_format = "YYYY-MM-DD"
    spec = human_to_strftime(date_format)
    datetime_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime(date, spec)
    print(datetime_obj)

Output:

2024-07-09 00:00:00