How can we do date and time math in Python?

It is very easy to do date and time maths in Python using timedelta objects. Whenever you want to add or subtract to a date/time, use a datetime.datetime(), then add or subtract datetime.timedelta() instances. A timedelta object represents a duration, the difference between two dates or times. The timedelta constructor has the following function signature −

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

Note: All arguments are optional and default to 0. Arguments may be ints, longs, or floats, and may be positive or negative. You can read more about it here − https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#timedelta-objects

Example

An example of using the timedelta objects and dates −

import datetime
old_time = datetime.datetime.now()
print(old_time)
new_time = old_time - datetime.timedelta(hours=2, minutes=10)
print(new_time)

Output

This will give the output −

2018-01-04 11:09:00.694602
2018-01-04 08:59:00.694602

timedelta() arithmetic is not supported for datetime.time() objects; if you need to use offsets from an existing datetime.time() object, just use datetime.datetime.combine() to form a datetime.datetime() instance, do your calculations, and 'extract' the time again with the .time() method.

Subtracting 2 datetime objects gives a timedelta object. This timedelta object can be used to find the exact difference between the 2 datetimes.

Example

t1 = datetime.datetime.now()
t2 = datetime.datetime.now()
print(t1 - t2)
print(type(t1 - t2))

Output

This will give the output −

-1 day, 23:59:56.653627
<class 'datetime.timedelta'>

Rajendra Dharmkar

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Updated on: 02-Nov-2023

2K+ Views

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