Unable to insert datetime object

Environment info Operating System: Windows 10 Python version: 2.7.12 gspread version: 2.0.0

Steps to reproduce

1. worksheet.insert_row([datetime.datetime.now()])

Traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:/gspreadinserttest.py", line 21, in <module>
    sh.insert_row([datetime.datetime.now()])
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\gspread\v4\models.py", line 685, in insert_row
    'values': [values]
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\gspread\v4\models.py", line 112, in values_update
    r = self.client.request('put', url, params=params, json=body)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\gspread\v4\client.py", line 67, in request
    endpoint, json=json, params=params, data=data, files=files
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\sessions.py", line 566, in put
    return self.request('PUT', url, data=data, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\sessions.py", line 494, in request
    prep = self.prepare_request(req)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\sessions.py", line 437, in prepare_request
    hooks=merge_hooks(request.hooks, self.hooks),
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 308, in prepare
    self.prepare_body(data, files, json)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 458, in prepare_body
    body = complexjson.dumps(json)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\__init__.py", line 231, in dumps
    return _default_encoder.encode(obj)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\encoder.py", line 201, in encode
    chunks = self.iterencode(o, _one_shot=True)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\encoder.py", line 264, in iterencode
    return _iterencode(o, 0)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\encoder.py", line 178, in default
    raise TypeError(repr(o) + " is not JSON serializable")
TypeError: datetime.datetime(2018, 3, 11, 13, 26, 34, 292000) is not JSON serializable

I know it is possible to convert to a string before inserting however in previous gspread versions I could insert a datetime object and it would format the datetime using the formatting from the google sheet. Is there anyway this kind of functionality could be replicated in 2.0.0?

[cgmorton]

I’m not sure how helpful this will be, but I was able to write a date to the sheet by converting it to a count of the number of days since the Google Sheets epoch date of “1899-12-30” (https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/guides/concepts).

Something like: cell.value = (datetime.datetime(2018, 3, 11) - datetime.datetime(1899, 12, 30)).days

[MAlhussaini]

You could use this function, it worked for me:

Imports:

import gspread
import datetime

Lets have a variable now as datetime object:

now = datetime.datetime.now()

then pass now to the following function as string.

wb.values_update(
    'sheet1!A2',
    params={
        'valueInputOption': 'USER_ENTERED'
    },
    body={
        'values': [[str(now)]]
    }
)

This way your entered datetime will be recognized by google sheet as if it was entered by a person. If you want to know more about how to use gspread follow this link.

Entering multiple values could be done as well by replacing [[str(now)]]

with:

[[str(now) ,'b','c','d']]