Question: I am using the following code to use the date in a specific format and running into following error..how to put date in m/d/y format?

```
from datetime import datetime, date

def main ():
    cr_date = '2013-10-31 18:23:29.000227'
    crrdate = cr_date.strftime(cr_date,"%m/%d/%Y")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

```

Error:-

```
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'strftime'

```

Answer: 
You should use `datetime` object, not `str`.

```
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> cr_date = datetime(2013, 10, 31, 18, 23, 29, 227)
>>> cr_date.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')
'10/31/2013'

```

To get the datetime object from the string, use [`datetime.datetime.strptime`](http://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#datetime.datetime.strptime):

```
>>> datetime.strptime(cr_date, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')
datetime.datetime(2013, 10, 31, 18, 23, 29, 227)
>>> datetime.strptime(cr_date, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f').strftime('%m/%d/%Y')
'10/31/2013'

```
you should change cr\_date(str) to datetime object then you 'll change the date to the specific format:

```
cr_date = '2013-10-31 18:23:29.000227'
cr_date = datetime.datetime.strptime(cr_date, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')
cr_date = cr_date.strftime("%m/%d/%Y")

```