How do I get the day of week given a date in Pytho

Question

I want to find out the following: given a date (datetime object), what is the corresponding day of the week.

For instance Sunday is the first day, Monday: second day.. and so on

And then if the input is something like today's date.

Example

>>> today = datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 20)
>>> today.get_weekday()  # what I look for

The output is maybe 6 (since its Friday)

Answer 1

If you have reason to avoid the use of the datetime module, then this function will work.

Note: The change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar is assumed to have occurred in 1582. If this is not true for your calendar of interest then change the line if year > 1582: accordingly.

def dow(year,month,day):
    """ day of week, Sunday = 1, Saturday = 7
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence """
    m, q = month, day
    if m == 1:
        m = 13
        year -= 1
    elif m == 2:
        m = 14
        year -= 1
    K = year % 100    
    J = year // 100
    f = (q + int(13*(m + 1)/5.0) + K + int(K/4.0))
    fg = f + int(J/4.0) - 2 * J
    fj = f + 5 - J
    if year > 1582:
        h = fg % 7
    else:
        h = fj % 7
    if h == 0:
        h = 7
    return h

Answer 2

If you'd like to have the date in English:

from datetime import date
import calendar
my_date = date.today()
calendar.day_name[my_date.weekday()]  #'Wednesday'

Answer 3

If you're not solely reliant on the datetime module, calendar might be a better alternative. This, for example, will provide you with the day codes:

calendar.weekday(2017,12,22);

And this will give you the day itself:

days = ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday"]
days[calendar.weekday(2017,12,22)]

Or in the style of python, as a one liner:

["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday"][calendar.weekday(2017,12,22)]

Answer 4

datetime library sometimes gives errors with strptime() so I switched to dateutil library. Here's an example of how you can use it :

from dateutil import parser
parser.parse('January 11, 2010').strftime("%a")

The output that you get from this is 'Mon'. If you want the output as 'Monday', use the following :

parser.parse('January 11, 2010').strftime("%A")

This worked for me pretty quickly. I was having problems while using the datetime library because I wanted to store the weekday name instead of weekday number and the format from using the datetime library was causing problems. If you're not having problems with this, great! If you are, you cand efinitely go for this as it has a simpler syntax as well. Hope this helps.

Answer 5

Assuming you are given the day, month, and year, you could do:

import datetime
DayL = ['Mon','Tues','Wednes','Thurs','Fri','Satur','Sun']
date = DayL[datetime.date(year,month,day).weekday()] + 'day'
#Set day, month, year to your value
#Now, date is set as an actual day, not a number from 0 to 6.

print(date)

Answer 6

Here is my python3 implementation.

months = {'jan' : 1, 'feb' : 4, 'mar' : 4, 'apr':0, 'may':2, 'jun':5, 'jul':6, 'aug':3, 'sep':6, 'oct':1, 'nov':4, 'dec':6}
dates = {'Sunday':1, 'Monday':2, 'Tuesday':3, 'Wednesday':4, 'Thursday':5, 'Friday':6, 'Saterday':0}
ranges = {'1800-1899':2, '1900-1999':0, '2000-2099':6, '2100-2199':4, '2200-2299':2}

def getValue(val, dic):
    if(len(val)==4):
        for k,v in dic.items():
            x,y=int(k.split('-')[0]),int(k.split('-')[1])
            val = int(val)
            if(val>=x and val<=y):
                return v
    else:
        return dic[val]

def getDate(val):
    return (list(dates.keys())[list(dates.values()).index(val)]) 



def main(myDate):
    dateArray = myDate.split('-')
    # print(dateArray)
    date,month,year = dateArray[2],dateArray[1],dateArray[0]
    # print(date,month,year)

    date = int(date)
    month_v = getValue(month, months)
    year_2 = int(year[2:])
    div = year_2//4
    year_v = getValue(year, ranges)
    sumAll = date+month_v+year_2+div+year_v
    val = (sumAll)%7
    str_date = getDate(val)

    print('{} is a {}.'.format(myDate, str_date))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    testDate = '2018-mar-4'
    main(testDate)