Is there a way to make custom date formats in Julia? - date

Question

I would like to be able to convert
"Tue Sep 01 00:00:26 +00:00 2020"
into a date type in Julia using the built in Date function.
I only need the year, month, and date.

Answer 1

This is tricky because you have a time zone here hence you need to use TimeZones.jl
using TimeZones, Dates
df = Dates.DateFormat("e u d H:M:S z y");
d = ZonedDateTime("Tue Sep 01 00:00:26 +00:00 2020", df)
Let se what we got:
julia> d = ZonedDateTime("Tue Sep 01 00:00:26 +00:00 2020", df)
2020-09-01T00:00:26+00:00
julia> Date(d)
2020-09-01
For more try typying ?DateFormat in the console - you will see the docs.
Code Matches Comment
–––––––– ––––––––– ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
y 1996, 96 Returns year of 1996, 0096
Y 1996, 96 Returns year of 1996, 0096. Equivalent to y
m 1, 01 Matches 1 or 2-digit months
u Jan Matches abbreviated months according to the locale keyword
U January Matches full month names according to the locale keyword
d 1, 01 Matches 1 or 2-digit days
H 00 Matches hours (24-hour clock)
I 00 For outputting hours with 12-hour clock
M 00 Matches minutes
S 00 Matches seconds
s .500 Matches milliseconds
e Mon, Tues Matches abbreviated days of the week
E Monday Matches full name days of the week
p AM Matches AM/PM (case-insensitive)
yyyymmdd 19960101 Matches fixed-width year, month, and day

Answer 2

To parse dates you need the Dates.jl standard library. To parse this particular format though, I think you additionally need the TimeZones.jl package:
using Dates
using TimeZones # gives the `z` for the format below
fmt = dateformat"e u d H:M:S z y" # the format of your string
d = Date("Tue Sep 01 00:00:26 +00:00 2020", fmt)
Then you can simply look at d's values for example with:
julia> d
2020-09-01
julia> year(d)
2020
julia> month(d)
9
julia> day(d)
1