PyQt5 QCalendarWidget selectedDate format change

Question

I've been trying to use QCalendarWidget to select dates that I will use later.

So I've created the widget, it shows and all look well. Then I print the selected date in a textbrowser for testing, and I see the date format is bad.

This is the code relevant for this issue:

from PyQt5 import QtGui, QtCore, QtWidgets, uic

class Window(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super(Window, self).__init__()
        self.ui = uic.loadUi('rent_creation.ui', self)
        #the widgets are called calendarWidget_start_date_2 and calendarWidget_end_date_2
        self.ui.activate_thescript.clicked.connect(self.activate_script)
        self.show()

    def activate_script(self):
        global start_date
        global end_date
        start_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_start_date_2.selectedDate().toString()
        end_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_end_date_2.selectedDate().toString()
        #print data in text browser
        text = "Start date: %s \n End date: %s \n" %(start_date, end_date)
        self.ui.textBrowser.setText(text)

start_date = QtCore.QDate.currentDate()
end_date = QtCore.QDate.currentDate()

def run():     
    app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
    GUI = Window()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())


run()

The result is:

Start date: Wed May 9 2018 
End date: Tue May 15 2018

I need the date format in the result to be:

Start date: 2018-05-09 
End date: 2018-05-15

Thanks for the help :)

(I'm using globals only for the example, obviously I kick them out on my real code)

Answer 1

You have to pass toString() the format "yyyy-MM-dd":

...
start_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_start_date_2.selectedDate().toString("yyyy-MM-dd")
end_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_end_date_2.selectedDate().toString("yyyy-MM-dd")
...

Or QtCore.Qt.ISODate:

...
start_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_start_date_2.selectedDate().toString(QtCore.Qt.ISODate)
end_date = self.ui.calendarWidget_end_date_2.selectedDate().toString(QtCore.Qt.ISODate)
...