Calculating Date Field with today's date from datetime.date.today()?

Question

I'm working on part of tool that will use arcpy.CalculateField_management to add the current date to the attribut table. I've wandered far and wide on the interwebs and can't seem to find the resolution to this issue.

When using this code, i get the value "12:00:00 AM"

    input = r'C:\GIS\CARGIS\SHAPES.gdb\CRASH_ON_2013'
    today = datetime.date.today()
    dte = today.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')
    arcpy.CalculateField_management(input,"DTCARXTRCT",dte,"PYTHON")

When using this code, I get the value "06/19/1905" from today's date of "10/07/2014"

    input = r'C:\GIS\CARGIS\SHAPES.gdb\CRASH_ON_2013'
    today = datetime.date.today()
    dte = str(today)
    arcpy.CalculateField_management(input,"DTCARXTRCT",dte,"PYTHON")

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong? I'd like to avoid using the update cursor, but will do so if it's the last option.

Answer 1

An update Cursor will out perform the field calculator 100% of the time.

You need to write this as an expression:

import arcpy, datetime

fc = r'C:\GIS\CARGIS\SHAPES.gdb\CRASH_ON_2013'
field = "DTCARXTRCT"
exp = '''def add_date():
  import time
  return time.strftime("%Y/%m/%d")'''

arcpy.CalculateField_management(fc, field, 'add_date()',
                                'PYTHON', exp)
print 'done'

datetime.date.today() did not work in field calculator, switched to strftime.

OR, if you want to do it the better way where you can feed your own variables in, use a cursor:

import arcpy, datetime

fc = r'C:\GIS\CARGIS\SHAPES.gdb\CRASH_ON_2013'
field = "DTCARXTRCT"
with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, [field]) as rows:
    for row in rows:
        rows.updateRow([datetime.date.today()])
print 'done'

Answer 2

Try using:

time.strftime("%Y/%m/%d")