The datetime Module

The datetime module provides classes for manipulating dates and times in various ways. While the standard representation of time is supported, there is a greater emphasis on the ease of manipulating dates, times, and their components. The classes provided by the datetime module include:

datetime.date (year, month, day)¶

Standard date. Attributes: year, month, day. Immutable object.

import datetime
d = datetime.date(2012, 12, 14)

print(d.year)  # 2012
print(d.day)   # 14
print(d.month) # 12

datetime.datetime (year, month, day, hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0, tzinfo=None)¶

Contains all the information of datetime.date objects plus datetime.time.

import datetime

a = datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 5)
print(a)  # datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 5, 0, 0)

b = datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 5, 12, 30, 10)
print(b)  # datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 5, 12, 30, 10)

d = datetime.datetime(2017, 3, 5, 12, 30, 10)
print(d.year)   # 2017
print(d.second) # 10
print(d.hour)   # 12

datetime.datetime accepts several additional arguments: year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. It also allows specifying information about microseconds and time zones.

datetime.time (hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0, tzinfo=None)¶

Standard time, independent of date. Attributes: hour, minute, second, microsecond, tzinfo.

datetime.timedelta¶

Describes a specific duration in time, which is the difference between two distinct moments.

Supported Operations

timedelta.total_seconds ()¶

Returns the total number of seconds contained in the duration. Equivalent to (td.microseconds + (td.seconds + td.days * 24 * 3600) * 10 * 6) / 10 * 6 calculated with true division enabled. Example:

from datetime import timedelta

year = timedelta(days=365)
another_year = timedelta(weeks=40, days=84, hours=23, minutes=50, seconds=600)  # adds up to 365 days

print(year.total_seconds())  # 31536000.0
print(year == another_year)  # True

ten_years = 10 * year
print(ten_years, ten_years.days // 365)  # (datetime.timedelta(days=3650), 10)

nine_years = ten_years - year
print(nine_years, nine_years.days // 365)  # (datetime.timedelta(days=3285), 9)

three_years = nine_years // 3
print(three_years, three_years.days // 365)  # (datetime.timedelta(days=1095), 3)

print(abs(three_years - ten_years) == 2 * three_years + year)  # True

datetime.tzinfo¶

Abstract base class for time zone information (e.g., for accounting for time zones and/or daylight saving time).

Class Methods of datetime:

datetime.combine (date, time)¶

datetime object from the combination of date and time objects.

datetime.fromtimestamp (timestamp)¶

Date from the standard time representation.

datetime.fromordinal (ordinal)¶

Date from a number representing the number of days since 01.01.1970.

datetime.now (tz=None)¶

datetime object from the current date and time.

datetime.today ()¶

datetime object from the current date and time. Works the same as datetime.now() with tz=None.

datetime.strptime (date_string, format)¶

Converts a string to datetime according to the format.

datetime.strftime (format)¶

Converts datetime to a string according to the format.

datetime.date ()¶

Date object (with time truncated).

datetime.isoweekday ()¶

Day of the week as a number, Monday is 1, Sunday is 7.

datetime.isocalendar ()¶

Tuple (ISO year, ISO week number, ISO weekday).

datetime.isoformat (sep='T')¶

A nicely formatted string like “YYYY-MM-DDTHH: MM: SS.mmmmmm” or, if microsecond == 0, “YYYY-MM-DDTHH: MM: SS”.

datetime.replace ([year[, month[, day[, hour, minute, second, microsecond, tzinfo]]]])¶

Returns a new datetime object with modified attributes.

datetime.time ()¶

Time object (with date truncated).

datetime.timetuple ()¶

Returns struct_time from datetime.

datetime.timestamp ()¶

Returns the time in seconds since the epoch.

datetime.toordinal ()¶

Number of days since 01.01.1970.

datetime.weekday ()¶

Day of the week as a number, Monday is 0, Sunday is 6.

Supported Operations: