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How do I parse an ISO 8601-formatted date in Python?

Here, we are going to learn how do I parse an ISO 8601-formatted date in Python programming language?
Submitted by Sapna Deraje Radhakrishna, on March 05, 2020

Python provides a datetime standard library which introduces datetime.isoformat(). As per the python docs.

    date.isoformat()

It represents the date as a String in ISO 8601 format, 'YYYY-MM-DD'.

For example:

    date(2002, 12, 4).isoformat() == '2002-12-04'

More details on this library can be read https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html

Example of use:

from datetime import datetime

date = datetime.fromisoformat('2020-03-04T12:30:59.000000')
print(date)

# Local time without timezone information 
# displayed in ISO 8601 format

dateTime = datetime.today()
print(dateTime.isoformat("|"))

Output

2020-03-04 12:30:59
2020-03-05|20:11:20.295433