In a database export file i have a column with dates which are stored in binary format. I'm trying to unpack dates in the file so that "\x07\xdb\x0c\x01" becomes "01-12-2011" again.
I know how the hexadecimal values corresspond to their decimal counterpart,
0x07DB = 2011
0x0C = 12
0x01 = 01
But how to properly unpack these formatted dates?
Use the struct module to unpack these values to a tuple of integers:
import struct
year, month, day = struct.unpack('>HBB', "\x07\xdb\x0c\x01")
The >HBB format specifier tells struct to expect 3 values in little endian format, one unsigned short (a 2 byte value, read as an integer) and to unsigned chars (1 byte values, read as integers).
You could then pass these to datetime.date() to create a date object if you want:
from datetime import date
import struct
somedate = date(*struct.unpack('>HBB', "\x07\xdb\x0c\x01"))
Demo:
>>> import struct
>>> from datetime import date
>>> date(*struct.unpack('>HBB', "\x07\xdb\x0c\x01"))
datetime.date(2011, 12, 1)
or you could use string formatting:
>>> '{2:02d}-{1:02d}-{0}'.format(*struct.unpack('>HBB', "\x07\xdb\x0c\x01"))
'01-12-2011'
to create a string representing that date.