{"id":226,"date":"2019-02-20T03:11:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T03:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kindsonthegenius.com\/python\/?p=226"},"modified":"2026-07-04T01:21:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T01:21:27","slug":"14-python-date-and-time-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kindsonthegenius.com\/python\/14-python-date-and-time-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Python – Date and Time 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this lesson, you will learn how to work with Date, Time and DateTime classes in Python. Also we would learn how to format date and time data.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
      \n
    1. Introduction to Python Date and Time<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Working with Current Date and Time<\/a><\/li>\n
    3. Getting Day, Month, Year and Weekday<\/a><\/li>\n
    4. Getting both Date and Time<\/a><\/li>\n
    5. Working with only Time<\/a><\/li>\n
    6. Formatting using strftime()<\/em> function<\/a><\/li>\n
    7. Watch the Video<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      1. Introduction to Python Date and Time<\/strong><\/h4>\n

      Python provides a number of module and several functions for working with date and time.<\/p>\n

      Before you can work with date, time and datetime codes, you need to import the necessary modules. These modules are date, time and datetime. This is shown below.<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      from<\/span> datetime<\/span> import<\/span> date\r\nfrom<\/span> datetime<\/span> import<\/span> time\r\nfrom<\/span> datetime<\/span> import<\/span> datetime\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      2. Working with Current Date and Time<\/strong><\/h4>\n
      The first thing you want to do with date and time is to get today’s date. To do that you use the today() function in the date module.<\/p>\n
      The code below prints out the today’s date<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      today =<\/span> date.<\/span>today()\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Today's date is \"<\/span>, today)\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      If you run the above code, you will have the output below:<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      Today's date is  2019-02-20<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      3. Getting Day, Month, Year and Weekday<\/strong><\/h4>\n
      You will notice that the date is made up of day, month and year. We can therefore separate a date in to the three components. This is done using the day, month and year methods.<\/p>\n
      The code below prints out the day, month and year in today’s date.<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      today =<\/span> date.<\/span>today()\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Today's date is \"<\/span>, today)\r\n\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Day: \"<\/span>, today.<\/span>day)\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Month: \"<\/span>, today.<\/span>month)\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Year: \"<\/span>, today.<\/span>year)\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      Run this code and examine the output<\/p>\n
      You can also get the weekday using the today.weekday()<\/em><\/strong> function. If you use this function, you get the weekday’s number. This is such that Monday = 0, Tuesday = 1, Wednesday = 3, and so on. You can try this yourself.<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      4. Getting both Date and Time<\/strong><\/h4>\n
      The two functions that gives you both date and time together are the today()<\/em> and the now()<\/em> functions. You use them to create datetime objects. These function however, are in the datetime module.<\/p>\n
      The datetime object includes hours, minutes, seconds and microseconds.<\/p>\n
      The code below prints a datetime object representing the current date and time.<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      today =<\/span> datetime.<\/span>today()\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Today's date is \"<\/span>, today)\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      If you execute this code, the output would be as shown below. You can also get the same output using the\u00a0datetime.now()<\/em>\u00a0function.<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      Today's date is  2019-02-20 03:10:58.165653<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      5. Working with Only Time<\/strong><\/h4>\n
      To get only the time you need to use the time function. This function takes an argument of a datetime object from the datetime module.<\/p>\n
      For example, the code below outputs only the current time<\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      # Getting the current time<\/span>\r\ntoday =<\/span> datetime.<\/span>now()\r\ncurrenttime =<\/span> datetime.<\/span>time(datetime.<\/span>today())\r\nprint<\/span>(\"The Current time is: \"<\/span>, currenttime)\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      The output of this code is the current time. Now we would write a code that separates the time into hours, minutes, seconds and microseconds. You can find the code below:<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      # Getting hours, minutes and seconds<\/span>\r\ntoday =<\/span> datetime.<\/span>now()\r\ncurrenttime =<\/span> datetime.<\/span>time(datetime.<\/span>today())\r\nprint<\/span>(\"The Current time is: \"<\/span>, currenttime)\r\n\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Hours \"<\/span>, currenttime.<\/span>hour)\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Minutes \"<\/span>, currenttime.<\/span>minute)\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Seconds \"<\/span>, currenttime.<\/span>second)\r\nprint<\/span>(\"Microseconds\"<\/span>, currenttime.<\/span>microsecond)\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      The output of the code is given below<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      The Current time is<\/span>:  03<\/span>:36<\/span>:17.469424<\/span>\r\nHours  3<\/span>\r\nMinutes  36<\/span>\r\nSeconds  17<\/span>\r\nMicroseconds 469424<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      6. Formatting Date and Time using strftime()<\/strong><\/h4>\n
      The strftime() is a method that applies to both date and time. It take various format parameters to format the date\/time objects.<\/p>\n
      For example, the code below displays the current date and time in 24hour format. It also displays the weekday.<\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n
      <\/p>\n
      print<\/span>(datetime.<\/span>now().<\/span>strftime(\"%A %b %d %Y by %I:%M %p\"<\/span>))\r\n<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n
      Find a complete list of strftime() function formats here.<\/a><\/p>\n
       <\/p>\n