RSS pubDate to python date

In RSS feeds one of the field is pubDate, which is common across any feed. This date is required to be in RFC 822 - Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages.

Sample - Sat, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:01 GMT

if you want to convert it to python date time, get help from email.utils of python
e.g.

>>> import rfc822

>>> rfc822.parsedate_tz('Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:30:52 EDT')

(2012, 7, 26, 13, 30, 52, 0, 1, 0, -14400)

Though above gives tuple, which you will need to convert to datetime.

If you dont care about timezone (e.g. EDT, GMT etc.), use below -

>>> from datetime import datetime

>>> datetime.strptime('Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:30:52 EDT'[:-4], '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')

datetime.datetime(2012, 7, 26, 13, 30, 52)

I am sure there are many other ways to do this, suggest if you come across any good one :)