Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

How to do it...

This recipe requires the following steps:

1. The locale module in the Python standard library provides a way to get formatting for the localization supported by your system. By using it, we can format dates in any way allowed by the target system:

import locale
import contextlib

@contextlib.contextmanager
def switchlocale(name):
    prev = locale.getlocale()
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, name)
    yield
    locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, prev)


def format_date(loc, d):
    with switchlocale(loc):
        fmt = locale.nl_langinfo(locale.D_T_FMT)
        return d.strftime(fmt)

2. Calling format_date will properly give the output as a string representation of the date in the expected locale module:

>>> format_date('de_DE', datetime.datetime.utcnow()) 'Mi 21 ...