ArcGIS Field Calculator Not Working With Date Field

Question

I am trying to calculate a field based on the date values in another field. Here is my code from the pre-logic script code box:

def getHalf(dfield):
  if dfield >= date '2017-08-27 00:00:00' AND dfield < date '2017-08-27 
  12:00:00':
    return 1

The field calculator fails on line 2. The input field is formatted as a date field, its values look like this when viewed in the attribute table:

8/27/2017 10:05:00 PM

However they look like this when I perform a select by attributes on the field, so I am pretty sure I got the syntax right:

date '2017-08-27 22:05:00'

And then of course this is the line of code attempting to calculate the field:

getHalf(!timestamp_cst!)

Answer 1

You have mixed SQL syntax with Python syntax. The Select by Attributes uses SQL but the Field Calculator python parser uses python.

def getHalf(dfield):
    df = datetime.datetime.strptime(dfield, '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')
    d1 = datetime.datetime.strptime('2017-08-27 00:00:00', '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')
    d2 = datetime.datetime.strptime('2017-08-27 12:00:00', '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')
    if df >= d1 and df < d2:
        return 1

This may depend on how your dates are stored - mine are different to yours, so I've had to use the strptime() format differently to yours, and I have tried to adjust here based on the dates you've shown in your question. For more info on the formatting tags see Python - Basic date and time types - 8.1.7. strftime() and strptime() Behavior

Explanation:

df = datetime.datetime.strptime(dfield, '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')

Tell python that your date field timestamp_cst contains a date. Python now stores this as a datetime object df.

d1 = datetime.datetime.strptime('2017-08-27 00:00:00', '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')
d2 = datetime.datetime.strptime('2017-08-27 12:00:00', '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S')

Put your start/end dates (times) into datetime objects for comparison against your date field.

if df >= d1 and df < d2:
    return 1

This runs the comparison of the datetime objects, so you are comparing datetime against datetime against datetime, not string against string or string against date etc.