Dates

Published Oct 6, 2021Updated Jun 7, 2022

Python has a built-in module called datetime that can be used to create and modify datetime objects.

Because the module comes built-in with Python, installation is not required, but we do need to import it at the top of a Python file.

Syntax

import datetime

The datetime module has three main types available:

date: Returns a date in the year-month-day format.
time: Returns a time in the hour-minute-second format with optional microsecond and timezone information.
datetime: Returns a date and time in the year-month-day and hour-minute-second formats.

Durations between any of these types can be returned by the .timedelta() method.

.datetime(): Returns a new object with date and time properties.
.datetime.now(): Returns the current date and timestamp.
.strftime(): Format time and date objects into readable strings based on specified patterns.
.strptime(): Returns a datetime object that represents the parsed date and time from the given string, based on the specified format.
.time(): Returns the seconds elapsed since the epoch.
datetime.date(): Returns a date object in the year-month-day format.
datetime.timedelta(): Returns a duration, resolved to microseconds, that occurs between dates, times, and datetimes.