[Zope] How do I get a string value of a DateTime object, in a given format

Hello, I'm sorry to ask such a basic DTML question...I just haven't been able to get this to work.. I'm hoping to use the Python slicing format to extract the various parts of a "pCommon" or aCommon" format date (the output from an SQL query) so that I can use them individually.. What is the syntax to get the string value of this non-strftime format date object, so that I can put it into a string variable for slicing? Thank you, Chris