Python: datetime

The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times in both simple and complex ways.

Available Types

class datetime.date
An idealized naive date, assuming the current Gregorian calendar always was, and always will be, in effect. Attributes: year, month, and day.

class datetime.time
An idealized time, independent of any particular day, assuming that every day has exactly 24*60*60 seconds (there is no notion of “leap seconds” here). Attributes: hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo.

class datetime.datetime
A combination of a date and a time. Attributes: year, month, day, hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo.

class datetime.timedelta
A duration expressing the difference between two date, time, or datetime instances to microsecond resolution.

class datetime.tzinfo
An abstract base class for time zone information objects. These are used by the datetime and time classes to provide a customizable notion of time adjustment (for example, to account for time zone and/or daylight saving time).

timedelta Objects
class datetime.timedelta([days[, seconds[, microseconds[, milliseconds[, minutes[, hours[, weeks]]]]]]])

>>> from datetime import timedelta
>>> d = timedelta(microseconds=-1)
>>> (d.days, d.seconds, d.microseconds)
(-1, 86399, 999999)

Attribute	Value
days	Between -999999999 and 999999999 inclusive
seconds	Between 0 and 86399 inclusive
microseconds	Between 0 and 999999 inclusive

date Objects
class datetime.date(year, month, day)

datetime Objects
class datetime.datetime(year, month, day[, hour[, minute[, second[, microsecond[, tzinfo]]]]])

Supported operations:

Operation	Result
datetime2 = datetime1 + timedelta	(1)
datetime2 = datetime1 - timedelta	(2)
timedelta = datetime1 - datetime2	(3)
datetime1 < datetime2	Compares datetime to datetime. (4)

Some class methos:

datetime.strftime(format)
Return a string representing the date and time, controlled by an explicit format string. See section strftime() and strptime() Behavior.

The following is a list of all the format codes that the C standard (1989 version) requires, and these work on all platforms with a standard C implementation. Note that the 1999 version of the C standard added additional format codes.

Directive	Meaning	Notes
%a	Locale’s abbreviated weekday name.
%A	Locale’s full weekday name.
%b	Locale’s abbreviated month name.
%B	Locale’s full month name.
%c	Locale’s appropriate date and time representation.
%d	Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
%f	Microsecond as a decimal number [0,999999], zero-padded on the left	(1)
%H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].
%I	Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].
%j	Day of the year as a decimal number [001,366].
%m	Month as a decimal number [01,12].
%M	Minute as a decimal number [00,59].
%p	Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM.	(2)
%S	Second as a decimal number [00,61].	(3)
%U	Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.	(4)
%w	Weekday as a decimal number [0(Sunday),6].
%W	Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0.	(4)
%x	Locale’s appropriate date representation.
%X	Locale’s appropriate time representation.
%y	Year without century as a decimal number [00,99].
%Y	Year with century as a decimal number.
%z	UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty string if the the object is naive).	(5)
%Z	Time zone name (empty string if the object is naive).
%%	A literal '%' character.