[python-win32] Python ADO and Date Time Field in Access

[Tim Roberts]

leegold wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Given an MS-Access table with a date type field with a value of:
> 12:00:00 AM - just"12:00:00 AM", there's nothing else in the field.
>
> I want to print exactly what's in the field, ie. "12:00:00 AM".

Do you understand that this is not really what's present in that field?  
What's present in the field is a floating point number.  The number 
happens to represent the number of days since December 30, 1899.  Hours, 
minutes, and seconds are stored as the decimal part of the fraction.  
One hour is 0.04166666..., for example.

Access formats it as "12:00:00 AM" for you, because that's the local 
time format on your machine, and as Bob said, Access omits the date 
portion in the formatting if the number is less than 1.0.  That's part 
of the Access application, NOT the database engine.

> What's printed is:   12/30/0/ 00:00:00
>
> How do I get exactly what's in the field? Note, there could be any legal
> date time in the field - I'm trying in all cases to get exactly what's
> in the field...or to put it another way, exactly what I see when I open
> Access and look.
>   

The value of the "Value" property is a PyTime object.  It supports the 
Format method.  To get the time only, use:
    v = oRS.Fields(dt).Value
    print v.Format( "%H:%M:%S %p")

See:
    
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePython/2.3/pywin32/PyTime__Format_meth.html

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.