How do I insert a date string into the database as a date?

Question

I'm using an InsertCursor to insert rows into a feature class. One of the fields in the source data may contain a NULL data value. The destination feature class requires a date - it is not nullable. In the dictionary of values I pass to the InsertCursor, I insert a string value of "01/01/1970 00:00:00". When the cursor tries to insert the row, I get an error that says the column cannot be null.

How do I get the InsertCursor to insert the date string as a date?

Answer 1

Start by checking if the value is None. If it is, replace the value with this

if rowData[idx] is None:
     rowData[idx] = datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0)