Date and Time Handling in Python: Working with Temporal Data

A Python program can handle date and time in several ways. Converting between date formats is a common chore for computers. Following modules in Python's standard library handle date and time related processing −

• DateTime module

• Time module

• Calendar module

What are Tick Intervals

Time intervals are floating-point numbers in units of seconds. Particular instants in time are expressed in seconds since 12:00am, January 1, 1970(epoch).

There is a popular time module available in Python, which provides functions for working with times, and for converting between representations. The function time.time() returns the current system time in ticks since 12:00am, January 1, 1970(epoch).

Example

This would produce a result something as follows −

Number of ticks since 12:00am, January 1, 1970: 1681928297.5316436

Date arithmetic is easy to do with ticks. However, dates before the epoch cannot be represented in this form. Dates in the far future also cannot be represented this way - the cutoff point is sometime in 2038 for UNIX and Windows.

What is TimeTuple?

Many of the Python's time functions handle time as a tuple of 9 numbers, as shown below −

For example,

This would produce an output as follows −

time.struct_time(tm_year=2023, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=23, tm_min=49, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=109, tm_isdst=0)

The above tuple is equivalent to struct_time structure. This structure has the following attributes −

Getting the Current Time

To translate a time instant from seconds since the epoch floating-point value into a time-tuple, pass the floating-point value to a function (e.g., localtime) that returns a time-tuple with all valid nine items.

This would produce the following result, which could be formatted in any other presentable form −

Local current time : time.struct_time(tm_year=2023, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=23, tm_min=42, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=109, tm_isdst=0)

Getting the Formatted Time

You can format any time as per your requirement, but a simple method to get time in a readable format is asctime() −

This would produce the following output −

Local current time : Wed Apr 19 23:45:27 2023

Getting the Calendar for a Month

The calendar module gives a wide range of methods to play with yearly and monthly calendars. Here, we print a calendar for a given month (Jan 2008).

This would produce the following output −

Here is the calendar:
     April 2023
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
                1  2
 3  4  5  6  7  8  9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The time Module

There is a popular time module available in Python, which provides functions for working with times and for converting between representations. Here is the list of all available methods.

Let us go through the functions briefly.

There are two important attributes available with time module. They are −

The calendar Module

The calendar module supplies calendar-related functions, including functions to print a text calendar for a given month or year.

By default, calendar takes Monday as the first day of the week and Sunday as the last one. To change this, call the calendar.setfirstweekday() function.

Here is a list of functions available with the calendar module −

datetime module

Python's datetime module is included in the standard library. It consists of classes that help manipulate data and time data and perform date time arithmetic.

Objects of datetime classes are either aware or naïve. If the object includes timezone information it is aware, and if not it is classified as naïve. An object of date class is naïve, whereas time and datetime objects are aware.

date

A date object represents a date with year, month, and day. The current Gregorian calendar is indefinitely extended in both directions.

Syntax

Arguments must be integers, in the following ranges −

• year − MINYEAR <= year <= MAXYEAR

• month − 1 <= month <= 12

• day − 1 <= day <= number of days in the given month and year

If the value of any argument outside those ranges is given, ValueError is raised.

Example

It will produce the following output −

Date: 2023-04-19
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:\Python311\hello.py", line 8, in <module>
  date2 = date(2023, 4, 31)
ValueError: day is out of range for month

date class attributes

• date.min − The earliest representable date, date(MINYEAR, 1, 1).

• date.max − The latest representable date, date(MAXYEAR, 12, 31).

• date.resolution − The smallest possible difference between non-equal date objects.

• date.year − Between MINYEAR and MAXYEAR inclusive.

• date.month − Between 1 and 12 inclusive.

• date.day − Between 1 and the number of days in the given month of the given year.

Example

It will produce the following output −

Minimum Date: 0001-01-01
Maximum Date: 9999-12-31
Year: 2023
Month: 4
Day: 20

Classmethods in date class

• today() − Return the current local date.

• fromtimestamp(timestamp) − Return the local date corresponding to the POSIX timestamp, such as is returned by time.time().

• fromordinal(ordinal) − Return the date corresponding to the proleptic Gregorian ordinal, where January 1 of year 1 has ordinal 1.

• fromisoformat(date_string) − Return a date corresponding to a date_string given in any valid ISO 8601 format, except ordinal dates

Example

It will produce the following output −

2023-04-20
2023-04-20
2023-04-20
2023-04-20

Instance methods in date class

• replace() − Return a date by replacing specified attributes with new values by keyword arguments are specified.

• timetuple() − Return a time.struct_time such as returned by time.localtime().

• toordinal() − Return the proleptic Gregorian ordinal of the date, where January 1 of year 1 has ordinal 1. For any date object d, date.fromordinal(d.toordinal()) == d.

• weekday() − Return the day of the week as an integer, where Monday is 0 and Sunday is 6.

• isoweekday() − Return the day of the week as an integer, where Monday is 1 and Sunday is 7.

• isocalendar() − Return a named tuple object with three components: year, week and weekday.

• isoformat() − Return a string representing the date in ISO 8601 format, YYYY-MM-DD:

• __str__() − For a date d, str(d) is equivalent to d.isoformat()

• ctime() − Return a string representing the date:

• strftime(format) − Return a string representing the date, controlled by an explicit format string.

• __format__(format) − Same as date.strftime().

Example

It will produce the following output −

2023-04-20
time.struct_time(tm_year=2023, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=110, tm_isdst=-1)
2023-04-20
20/04/23
Thursday 20. April 2023
Thu Apr 20 00:00:00 2023
The day is 20, the month is April.
2023
4
20
0
0
0
3
110
-1
2023
16
4
2023-05-20

time

An object time class represents the local time of the day. It is independent of any particular day. It the object contains the tzinfo details, it is the aware object. If it is None then the time object is the naive object.

Syntax

datetime.time(hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0, tzinfo=None)

All arguments are optional. tzinfo may be None, or an instance of a tzinfo subclass. The remaining arguments must be integers in the following ranges −

• hour − 0 <= hour < 24,

• minute − 0 <= minute < 60,

• second − 0 <= second < 60,

• microsecond − 0 <= microsecond < 1000000

If any of the arguments are outside those ranges is given, ValueError is raised.

Example

It will produce the following output −

Time: 08:14:36
time 00:12:00
time 00:00:00
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/cg/root/64b912f27faef/main.py", line 12, in 
    time4 = time(hour = 26)
ValueError: hour must be in 0..23

Class attributes

• time.min − The earliest representable time, time(0, 0, 0, 0).

• time.max − The latest representable time, time(23, 59, 59, 999999).

• time.resolution − The smallest possible difference between non-equal time objects.

Example

It will produce the following output −

00:00:00
23:59:59.999999
0:00:00.000001

Instance attributes

• time.hour − In range(24)

• time.minute − In range(60)

• time.second − In range(60)

• time.microsecond − In range(1000000)

• time.tzinfo − the tzinfo argument to the time constructor, or None.

Example

It will produce the following output −

8
23
455000

Instance methods

• replace() − Return a time with the same value, except for those attributes given new values by whichever keyword arguments are specified.

• isoformat() − Return a string representing the time in ISO 8601 format

• __str__() − For a time t, str(t) is equivalent to t.isoformat().

• strftime(format) − Return a string representing the time, controlled by an explicit format string.

• __format__(format) − Same as time.strftime().

• utcoffset() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.utcoffset(None),

• dst() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.dst(None),

• tzname() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.tzname(None), or raises an exception

datetime

An object of datetime class contains the information of date and time together. It assumes the current Gregorian calendar extended in both directions; like a time object, and there are exactly 3600*24 seconds in every day.

Syntax

The year, month and day arguments are required.

• year − MINYEAR <= year <= MAXYEAR,

• month − 1 <= month <= 12,

• day − 1 <= day <= number of days in the given month and year,

• hour − 0 <= hour < 24,

• minute − 0 <= minute < 60,

• second −0 <= second < 60,

• microsecond − 0 <= microsecond < 1000000,

• fold − in [0, 1].

If any argument in outside ranges is given, ValueError is raised.

Example

It will produce the following output −

2023-04-20 00:00:00
2023-04-20 11:06:32.005000

Class attributes

• datetime.min − The earliest representable datetime, datetime(MINYEAR, 1, 1, tzinfo=None).

• datetime.max − The latest representable datetime, datetime(MAXYEAR, 12, 31, 23, 59, 59, 999999, tzinfo=None).

• datetime.resolution − The smallest possible difference between non-equal datetime objects, timedelta(microseconds=1).

Example

It will produce the following output −

Min DateTime 0001-01-01 00:00:00
Max DateTime 9999-12-31 23:59:59.999999

Instance Attributes

• datetime.year − Between MINYEAR and MAXYEAR inclusive.

• datetime.month − Between 1 and 12 inclusive.

• datetime.day − Between 1 and the number of days in the given month of the given year.

• datetime.hour − In range(24)

• datetime.minute − In range(60)

• datetime.second − In range(60)

• datetime.microsecond − In range(1000000).

• datetime.tzinfo − The object passed as the tzinfo argument to the datetime constructor, or None if none was passed.

• datetime.fold − In [0, 1]. Used to disambiguate wall times during a repeated interval.

Example

It will produce the following output −

Day: 20
Month: 4
Year: 2023
Hour: 15
Minute: 5
Second: 52

Class Methods

• today() − Return the current local datetime, with tzinfo None.

• now(tz=None) − Return the current local date and time.

• utcnow() − Return the current UTC date and time, with tzinfo None.

• utcfromtimestamp(timestamp) − Return the UTC datetime corresponding to the POSIX timestamp, with tzinfo None

• fromtimestamp(timestamp, timezone.utc) − On the POSIX compliant platforms, it is equivalent todatetime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=timezone.utc) + timedelta(seconds=timestamp)

• fromordinal(ordinal) − Return the datetime corresponding to the proleptic Gregorian ordinal, where January 1 of year 1 has ordinal 1.

• fromisoformat(date_string) − Return a datetime corresponding to a date_string in any valid ISO 8601 format.

Instance Methods

• date() − Return date object with same year, month and day.

• time() − Return time object with same hour, minute, second, microsecond and fold.

• timetz() − Return time object with same hour, minute, second, microsecond, fold, and tzinfo attributes. See also method time().

• replace() − Return a datetime with the same attributes, except for those attributes given new values by whichever keyword arguments are specified.

• astimezone(tz=None) − Return a datetime object with new tzinfo attribute tz

• utcoffset() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.utcoffset(self)

• dst() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.dst(self)

• tzname() − If tzinfo is None, returns None, else returns self.tzinfo.tzname(self)

• timetuple() − Return a time.struct_time such as returned by time.localtime().

• atetime.toordinal() − Return the proleptic Gregorian ordinal of the date.

• timestamp() − Return POSIX timestamp corresponding to the datetime instance.

• isoweekday() − Return day of the week as an integer, where Monday is 1, Sunday is 7.

• isocalendar() − Return a named tuple with three components: year, week and weekday.

• isoformat(sep='T', timespec='auto') − Return a string representing the date and time in ISO 8601 format

• __str__() − For a datetime instance d, str(d) is equivalent to d.isoformat(' ').

• ctime() − Return a string representing the date and time:

• strftime(format) − Return a string representing the date and time, controlled by an explicit format string.

• __format__(format) − Same as strftime().

Example

It will produce the following output −

2023-04-20 15:12:49.816343
2020
4
23
16
30
0
3
114
-1
2020
17
4

timedelta

The timedelta object represents the duration between two dates or two time objects.

Syntax

Internally, the attributes are stored in days, seconds and microseconds. Other arguments are converted to those units −

• A millisecond is converted to 1000 microseconds.

• A minute is converted to 60 seconds.

• An hour is converted to 3600 seconds.

• A week is converted to 7 days.

While days, seconds and microseconds are then normalized so that the representation is unique.

Example

The following example shows that Python internally stores days, seconds and microseconds only.

It will produce the following output −

114 days, 12:05:56.000010

Example

The following example shows how to add timedelta object to a datetime object.

It will produce the following output −

Date after 4 days: 2023-04-24 18:05:39.509905
Date before 15 days: 2023-04-05 18:05:39.509905

Class Attributes

• timedelta.min − The most negative timedelta object, timedelta(-999999999).

• timedelta.max − The most positive timedelta object, timedelta(days=999999999, hours=23, minutes=59, seconds=59, microseconds=999999).

• timedelta.resolution − The smallest possible difference between non-equal timedelta objects, timedelta(microseconds=1)

Example

It will produce the following output −

Minimum value: -999999999 days, 0:00:00
Maximum value 999999999 days, 23:59:59.999999

Instance Attributes

Since only day, second and microseconds are stored internally, those are the only instance attributes for a timedelta object.

• days − Between -999999999 and 999999999 inclusive

• seconds − Between 0 and 86399 inclusive

• microseconds − Between 0 and 999999 inclusive

Instance Methods

timedelta.total_seconds() − Return the total number of seconds contained in the duration.

Example

It will produce the following output −

1825 days, 0:00:00
5
365



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