Python - Find Date From String

Would anyone know a regex string or another method of obtaining the date and time from this string into variables? The position of the string could change, so line and char no woul

Solution 1:

This works with the example report you've provided. It returns both the start and completion date and should handle day-of-month suffixes like 'th', 'rd', etc.

import re

import dateutil.parser

REPORT = \
"""Dear Customer,

(Call Transferred) Start Time & Date: 00:05 Monday 6th February 2017
Completion Time & Date: 06:00 Monday 6th February 2017

Details of Work:"""defparse_report(data):
    dates = []

    for pattern in ['(?<=Start Time & Date: ).*', '(?<=Completion Time & Date: ).*']:
        date = dateutil.parser.parse(re.search(pattern, data).group(0))
        dates.append(date)

    return dates


if __name__ == '__main__':
    start, completion = parse_report(REPORT)
    print('Started: {}, Completed: {}'.format(start, completion))

Output

Started: 2017-02-06 00:05:00, Completed: 2017-02-06 06:00:00

Edit

Updated to use dateutil.parser instead which simplifies the code (thanks to asongtoruin for the suggestion).