Time, Date, Timestamp in Python

Internal

• Time
• Python Code Examples

Overview

Time, date and timestamps are handled with the time and datetime modules, available in the Standard Library.

Additionally, the dateutil module provides useful extensions.

time Module

Sleep

from time import sleep
sleep(1)

datetime Module

https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#module-datetime

https://geekflare.com/calculate-time-difference-in-python/

datetime Overview

The datetime module provides classes for manipulating dates and times. https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#module-datetime

The datetime package documentation seems to recommend the dateutil for time zone support and parsing.

Time Interval with timedelta

from datetime import datetime
dt1 = datetime.datetime(2022,3,27,13,27,45,46000) 
dt2 = datetime.datetime(2022,6,30,14,28) 
tdelta = dt2 - dt1 
print(tdelta) 
print(type(tdelta))

To get the total number of seconds in timedelta, use total_seconds():

from datetime import datetime
t0 = datetime.now()
...
t1 = datetime.now()
print((t1 - t0).total_seconds())

now Time

from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now()

current_time = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
print("Current Time =", current_time)

Current Date

With now():

from datetime import datetime
d = datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
print(d) # displays YYYY-mm-dd

With date.today():

from datetime import date
print(str(date.today()))

Format

from datetime import datetime
s = '12/31/2023'
d = datetime.strptime(s, "%m/%d/%Y")
assert d.year == 2023
assert d.month == 12
assert d.day == 31

The common timestamp elements are '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'. For more details on date format, see ?

Also see Time, Date and Timestamp Parsing with dateutil below.

dateutil Module

https://pypi.org/project/python-dateutil/

Time, Date and Timestamp Parsing with dateutil

The datetime package documentation seems to recommend the dateutil for time zone support and parsing.

import dateutil.parser as du

d = du.parse('10/01/2023')
assert d.year == 2023
assert d.month == 10
assert d.day == 1