Timedeltas in python

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timedeltas_in_python

Skill - Managing time periods using ‘timedelta’ in python

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Skills Required

Please make sure to have all the skills mentioned above to understand and execute the code mentioned below. Go through the above skills if necessary for reference or revision

datetime library in python is very useful in manipulating date-times.
timedelta module is present in datetime library itself

Create a time period object using timedelta

As shown below the timedelta function from datetime module can be used to create timedelta objects

dt.timedelta(days=0, seconds=0, microseconds=0, milliseconds=0,
 minutes=0, hours=0, weeks=0)

Example code is shown below

import datetime as dt

# create timedelta object to represent a time period of 10days, 3 hours, 4 mins, 26 seconds
tDelta = dt.timedelta(days=10, hours=3, minutes=4, seconds=26)

print(tDelta)

As shown above it is really easy to create variable that can store time period using timedelta objects

timedelta from difference of datetimes

timedelta can also be created as a difference between datetime objects

import datetime as dt

# t1 would be 1st May 2020
t1 = dt.datetime(2020, 5, 1)
print('time1 = {0}'.format(t1.strftime('%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')))

# t2 would be 15th June 2018
t2 = dt.datetime(2018, 6, 15)
print('time2 = {0}'.format(t2.strftime('%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')))

# get the difference between the times as a timedelta object
tDiff = t1-t2
print('time1 - time2 = {0}'.format(tDiff))

# print the type of tDiff
print('type of tDiff = {0}'.format(type(tDiff)))

add / subtract timeperiods to datetime using timedelta

time periods can be added/subtracted to datetime object using timedelta

import datetime as dt

# get the current time
tNow = dt.datetime.now()
print('now = {0}'.format(tNow.strftime('%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')))

# get datetime object after 15 hrs
tAfter15Hrs = tNow + dt.timedelta(hours = 15)
print('now + 15 hrs = {0}'.format(tAfter15Hrs.strftime('%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')))

# get datetime object before 1 day, 3 weeks
tBefore = tNow - dt.timedelta(weeks = 3, days = 1)
print('now - 1 day, 3 weeks = {0}'.format(tBefore.strftime('%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')))

access timedelta components

import datetime as dt

# create a timedelta object
tp = dt.datetime.now() - dt.datetime(2020,1,1)
print('timedelta object = {0}'.format(tp))
# print its compoenents
print('days = {0}'.format(tp.days))
print('seconds = {0}'.format(tp.seconds))
print('microseconds = {0}'.format(tp.microseconds))

get the total timeperiod span in seconds using ‘total_seconds’ function

import datetime as dt

# create a timedelta object
tDiff1May = dt.datetime.now() - dt.datetime(2020,1,1)

print('total timespan in seconds from 1st May 2020 = {0}'.format(tDiff1May.total_seconds()))

Video

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Online Interpreter

You can run these codes online at https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/online-compiler/

References

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