I’m using:

str(datetime.datetime.today()).split()[0]

to return today’s date in the YYYY-MM-DD format.

Is there a less crude way to achieve this?

You can use strftime:

from datetime import datetime

datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

Additionally, for anyone also looking for a zero-padded Hour, Minute, and Second at the end: (Comment by Gabriel Staples)

datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S')

You can use datetime.date.today() and convert the resulting datetime.date object to a string:

from datetime import date
today = str(date.today())
print(today)   # '2017-12-26'

Datetime is just lovely if you like remembering funny codes. Wouldn’t you prefer simplicity?

>>> import arrow
>>> arrow.now().format('YYYY-MM-DD')
'2017-02-17'

This module is clever enough to understand what you mean.

Just do pip install arrow.

Addendum: In answer to those who become exercised over this answer let me just say that arrow represents one of the alternative approaches to dealing with dates in Python. That’s mostly what I meant to suggest.

I always use the isoformat() function for this.

from datetime import date    
today = date.today().isoformat()
print(today) # '2018-12-05'

Note that this also works on datetime objects if you need the time in standard format as well.

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.today().isoformat()
print(now) # '2018-12-05T11:15:55.126382'

Other answers suggest the use of python’s datetime.datetime, but as @Bill Bell said, there are other libraries that offer simpler datetime interfaces either as a service or as part of a larger ecosystem of APIs. Here are two such libraries that make working with datetimes very simple.

PANDAS

You can use pd.to_datetime from the pandas library. Here are various options, depending on what you want returned.

import pandas as pd

pd.to_datetime('today')  # pd.to_datetime('now')
# Timestamp('2019-03-27 00:00:10.958567')

As a python datetime object,

pd.to_datetime('today').to_pydatetime()
# datetime.datetime(2019, 4, 18, 3, 50, 42, 587629)

As a formatted date string,

pd.to_datetime('today').isoformat()
# '2019-04-18T04:03:32.493337'

# Or, `strftime` for custom formats.
pd.to_datetime('today').strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
# '2019-03-27'

To get just the date from the timestamp, call Timestamp.date.

pd.to_datetime('today').date()
# datetime.date(2019, 3, 27)

Aside from to_datetime, you can directly instantiate a Timestamp object using,

pd.Timestamp('today')  # pd.Timestamp('now')
# Timestamp('2019-04-18 03:43:33.233093')

pd.Timestamp('today').to_pydatetime()
# datetime.datetime(2019, 4, 18, 3, 53, 46, 220068)

If you want to make your Timestamp timezone aware, pass a timezone to the tz argument.

pd.Timestamp('now', tz='America/Los_Angeles')
# Timestamp('2019-04-18 03:59:02.647819-0700', tz='America/Los_Angeles')

PENDULUM

If you’re working with pendulum, there are some interesting choices. You can get the current timestamp using now() or today’s date using today().

import pendulum 

pendulum.now()
# DateTime(2019, 3, 27, 0, 2, 41, 452264, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))

pendulum.today()
# DateTime(2019, 3, 27, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))

Additionally, you can also get tomorrow() or yesterday()‘s date directly without having to do any additional timedelta arithmetic.

pendulum.yesterday()
# DateTime(2019, 3, 26, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))

pendulum.tomorrow()
# DateTime(2019, 3, 28, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Los_Angeles'))

There are various formatting options available.

pendulum.now().to_date_string()
# '2019-03-27'

pendulum.now().to_formatted_date_string()
# 'Mar 27, 2019'

pendulum.now().to_day_datetime_string()
# 'Wed, Mar 27, 2019 12:04 AM'

Very late answer, but you can use:

import time
today = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
# 2020-02-14

You can use,

>>> from datetime import date
>>> date.today().__str__()
'2019-10-05'

I prefer this, because this is simple, but maybe somehow inefficient and buggy. You must check the exit code of shell command if you want a strongly error-proof program.

os.system('date +%Y-%m-%d')