Python Dates

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.

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:

2024-01-15 14:30:45.123456

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 some examples:

import datetime

x = datetime.datetime.now()

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

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.

import datetime

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

print(x)

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:

import datetime

x = datetime.datetime(2018, 6, 1)

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

A reference of all the legal format codes:

• %a - Weekday, short version (Wed)
• %A - Weekday, full version (Wednesday)
• %w - Weekday as a number 0-6 (0 is Sunday)
• %d - Day of month 01-31
• %b - Month name, short version (Dec)
• %B - Month name, full version (December)
• %m - Month as a number 01-12
• %y - Year, short version, without century (18)
• %Y - Year, full version (2018)
• %H - Hour 00-23
• %I - Hour 00-12
• %p - AM/PM
• %M - Minute 00-59
• %S - Second 00-59