Python Dates and Times

Python dates and times are a way to represent and manipulate date and time values in Python. They are represented by the datetime module, which provides a number of classes to work with dates and times.

The most basic class is the datetime.date class, which represents a single date. It has attributes for the year, month, and day. For example, to create a date object for the 4th of July, 2020:

date_obj = datetime.date(2020, 7, 4)

The datetime.time class represents a single time. It has attributes for the hour, minute, second, and microsecond. For example, to create a time object for 8:30 AM:

time_obj = datetime.time(8, 30)

The datetime.datetime class combines both date and time objects. It has attributes for the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond. For example, to create a datetime object for 8:30 AM on the 4th of July, 2020:

datetime_obj = datetime.datetime(2020, 7, 4, 8, 30)

The datetime module also provides a number of functions for manipulating dates and times. For example, to add one day to a date object:

new_date = date_obj + datetime.timedelta(days=1)

To subtract one hour from a time object:

new_time = time_obj - datetime.timedelta(hours=1)

To convert a datetime object to a string:

date_string = datetime_obj.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

Python dates and times are also useful for working with timezones. The datetime module provides the pytz module for working with timezones. For example, to create a datetime object for 8:30 AM in the Eastern timezone:

eastern_datetime = pytz.timezone('US/Eastern').localize(datetime_obj)

Finally, the datetime module provides a number of functions for formatting and parsing dates and times. For example, to format a date object as a string:

date_string = date_obj.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

To parse a string into a date object:

date_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime('2020-07-04', '%Y-%m-%d')

Python dates and times are a powerful and convenient way to work with date and time values in Python.