Date and Time in Python

udanielnogueira

Daniel Nogueira

Posted on January 4, 2023

Date and Time in Python

We can get data and time information in Python using the datetime module. Let's import it:

import datetime
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Date

In the datetime module we can use the date class, which has today() to load the current day's data:

date = datetime.date.today()
print(date)
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Result example:

2023-01-04
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We can also get each date information separately:

day = datetime.date.today().day
month = datetime.date.today().month
year = datetime.date.today().year

print(day)
print(month)
print(year)
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Result example:

4
1
2023
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Time

To get the time, we'll use the datetime class and its now() method:

now = datetime.datetime.now()
print(now)
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Result example:

2023-01-04 14:28:19.041413
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Note that the time schedule is organized into:

hour:minute:second.microsecond

Time formatting

We can change the way the time is being displayed through the strftime() method. By default, we have %d for day, %m for month, %y for year, %H for hour, %M for minute and %S for seconds. Let's use new variables to save these formatted values:

format1 = now.strftime('%d/%m/%y')
print(format1)

format2 = now.strftime('%d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S')
print(format2)
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Result example:

01/04/23
04.01.2023 14:28:19
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Note that using %Y, we have the year displayed with 4 characters.

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udanielnogueira
Daniel Nogueira

Posted on January 4, 2023

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