Examples

Convert string dates to datetime objects & vice versa

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
 
date_str = '2025-05-01'
# string to datetime object
date_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, '%Y-%m-%d')
# datetime object to string
date_str_2 = datetime.strftime(date_obj, '%Y-%m-%d')
print(f"date str to object: {date_obj}")
print(f"date object to str: {date_str_2}")

date str to object: 2025-05-01 00:00:00
date object to str: 2025-05-01

The difference is in the date type of the two variables

print(type(date_obj))
print(type(date_str_2))

<class 'datetime.datetime'>
<class 'str'>

This strftime can be even used on pandas.series

For more details, refer Generate date range