Three Simple Python Tricks to Convert Chinese Dates to YYYY/MM/DD

Introduction

A fan asked how to turn the Chinese date string 2021年9月28日 into the format 2021/9/28 using Python. Handling many such dates manually is cumbersome, so a programmatic solution is useful.

Idea

Although a simple string replace could work, three robust approaches are demonstrated to cover different scenarios and preferences.

Solution

Method 1

Directly replace the Chinese characters with slashes.

# coding: utf-8
date1 = '2021年9月28日'
date2 = date1.replace("年", "/").replace("月", "/").replace("日", "")
print(date2)

Method 2

Split the string into year, month, and day, then join with slashes.

# 方法二
# coding: utf-8
date1 = '2021年9月28日'
year = date1.split("年")[0]
month = date1.split("年")[1].split("月")[0]
day = date1.split("年")[1].split("月")[1].split("日")[0]
date2 = "/".join([year, month, day])
print(date2)

Method 3

Use the datetime module to parse and reformat the date.

# 方法三
# coding: utf-8
import datetime
date1 = '2021年9月28日'
b = datetime.datetime.strptime('2021年9月28日', '%Y年%m月%d日')
date2 = b.strftime('%Y/%m/%d')
print(date2)

Conclusion

These three methods demonstrate how to transform Chinese date strings into the standard YYYY/MM/DD format; you can choose the one that best fits your workflow and extend with additional techniques as needed.