ArcMap - Field Calculator / Calculate Value - extract month of median date between two dates

Question

I have a String field 'INTERVAL' giving the two dates used for a difference image in the form "YYYYMMDD_YYYYMMDD". I would like to populate a second field 'MONTH' giving the month of the median date of the two dates in 'INTERVAL' i.e. date1 + (date2 - date1 / 2) for example for 'INTERVAL' = 20180325_20180420 , the median month would be 4.

Ideally prefer to do it with Calculate Value in Modelbuilder.

I am not Python savvy so dealing with dates is particularly vexing.

ArcMap 10.4.1

Answer 1

Use Field Calculator with Python parser and the datetime module:

The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times in both simple and complex ways

Pre-Logic Script Code:

def mdate(dates):
    import datetime
    #Split into two strings
    first, second = dates.split('_')
    #Convert strings into datetime
    first = datetime.datetime.strptime(first,'%Y%m%d')
    second = datetime.datetime.strptime(second,'%Y%m%d')
    #Calculate mean month
    average_delta = (second - first) / 2
    return (first + average_delta).month

Call it, change !Dates! to match the name of your field:

mdate(!Dates!)