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 datetime x = datetime.datetime.now() print(x)
Output
Date Output
When we execute the code from the example above the result will be:
2018-10-26 15:57:46.741870
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 datetime x = datetime.datetime.now() print(x.year) print(x.strftime("%A"))
Output
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 datetime x = datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 17) print(x)
Output
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 datetime x = datetime.datetime(2018, 6, 1) print(x.strftime("%B"))
Output
A reference of all the legal format codes: