Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

How it works...

The format_date function is divided into two major parts.

The first is provided by the switchlocale context manager, which is in charge of enabling the requested locale (locales are process-wide), giving back control to the wrapped block of code and then restoring the original locale. This way, we can use the requested locale only within the context manager and not influence any other part of our software.

The second is what happens within the context manager itself. Using locale.nl_langinfo, the date-and-time format string (locale.D_T_FMT) is requested to the currently enabled locale. That gives back a string that tells us how to format a datetime in the currently active locale. The returned string will be something like ...