python datetime

Python Dates

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

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Example

Import the datetime module and display the current date:

Date Output

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

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 datetimex = datetime.datetime.now()print(x.year)

print(x.strftime("%A"))

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Example

Return the year and name of weekday:

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 datetimex = datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 17)

print(x)

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Example

Create a date object:

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

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Example

Display the name of the month:

A reference of all the legal format codes:

Directive

Description

Example

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%a

Weekday, short version

Wed

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%A

Weekday, full version

Wednesday

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%w

Weekday as a number 0-6, 0 is Sunday

3

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%d

Day of month 01-31

31

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%b

Month name, short version

Dec

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%B

Month name, full version

December

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%m

Month as a number 01-12

12

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%y

Year, short version, without century

18

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%Y

Year, full version

2018

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%H

Hour 00-23

17

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%I

Hour 00-12

05

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%p

AM/PM

PM

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%M

Minute 00-59

41

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%S

Second 00-59

08

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%f

Microsecond 000000-999999

548513

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%z

UTC offset

+0100







%Z

Timezone

CST







%j

Day number of year 001-366

365

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%U

Week number of year, Sunday as the first day of week, 00-53

52

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%W

Week number of year, Monday as the first day of week, 00-53

52

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%c

Local version of date and time

Mon Dec 31 17:41:00 2018

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%x

Local version of date

12/31/18

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%X

Local version of time

17:41:00

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%%

A % character

%

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%G

ISO 8601 year

2018

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%u

ISO 8601 weekday (1-7)

1

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%V

ISO 8601 weeknumber (01-53)

01

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