Python Datetime Module

 

Datetime Module

A date in Python is not a data type of its own, but we can import a module named datetime to work with dates as date objects.

Example

Import the datetime module and display the current date:

import datetime
x = datetime.datetime.now()
print(x)

Date Output

When we execute the code from the example above the result will be:

2023-01-30 14:31:33.141485

The date contains year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond.

The datetime module has many methods to return information about the date object.

Here are a few examples, you will learn more about them later in this chapter:

Example

Return the year and name of weekday:

import datetime
x = datetime.datetime.now()
print(x.year)
print(x.strftime("%A"))

Output:

2023

Monday

Creating Date Objects

To create a date, we can use the datetime() class (constructor) of the datetime module.

The datetime() class requires three parameters to create a date: year, month, day.

Example

Create a date object:

import datetime
x = datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 17)
print(x)

Output:

2023-01-30 00:00:00

The datetime() class also takes parameters for time and timezone (hour, minute, second, microsecond, tzone), but they are optional, and has a default value of 0, (None for timezone).

The strftime() Method

The datetime object has a method for formatting date objects into readable strings.

The method is called strftime(), and takes one parameter, format, to specify the format of the returned string:

Example

Display the name of the month:

import datetime
x = datetime.datetime(2018, 6, 1)
print(x.strftime("%B"))

Output:

June

A reference of all the legal format codes:

Directive	Description	Example
%a	Weekday, short version	Wed
%A	Weekday, full version	Wednesday
%w	Weekday as a number 0-6, 0 is Sunday	3
%d	Day of month 01-31	31
%b	Month name, short version	Dec
%B	Month name, full version	December
%m	Month as a number 01-12	12
%y	Year, short version, without century	18
%Y	Year, full version	2018
%H	Hour 00-23	17
%I	Hour 00-12	05
%p	AM/PM	PM
%M	Minute 00-59	41
%S	Second 00-59	08
%f	Microsecond 000000-999999	548513
%z	UTC offset	+0100
%Z	Timezone	CST
%j	Day number of year 001-366	365
%U	Week number of year, Sunday as the first day of week, 00-53	52
%W	Week number of year, Monday as the first day of week, 00-53	52
%c	Local version of date and time	Mon Dec 31 17:41:00 2018
%C	Century	20
%x	Local version of date	12/31/18
%X	Local version of time	17:41:00
%%	A % character	%
%G	ISO 8601 year	2018
%u	ISO 8601 weekday (1-7)	1
%V	ISO 8601 weeknumber (01-53)	01

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