datetime class

 


Timestamp

Before moving into datetime class and objects, it is required to have a knowledge on what are timestamps ? In Unix systems, it is the number seconds between the given input and January 1 1970 at UTC. It is also known as POSIX timestamp. In Python also the same thing happens when you convert a date and time into timestamp. 

Constructors in datetime

1. datetime.datetime ( year, month, day, hour, min, sec, microseconds, tzinfo)

Returns current date and time without timezone information.

2. datetime.today ( )

Returns current local time and date without time zone information. It takes no parameter.

3. datetime.now (tz=None)

Returns current local time and date. By default the tzinfo is None, but it can be passed as parameter, if the tzinfo abstract class has been implemented separately by the user.

4. datetime.utcnow ()

Returns a naive datetime object which has current UTC date and time and tzinfo is set to none. It takes no parameter.

5. datetime.fromtimestamp (timestamp, tz=None)

Takes the timestamp as input, tzinfo is an optional parameter. Returns the local date and time which is represented by the input.

6. datetime.utcfromtimestamp (timestamp)

Returns the UTC date and time that corresponds to the input timestamp without timezone information.

7. datetime.strptime (date_string, formatting string)

Returns the date time object that corresponds to the input date and time string. The object will be formatted based on the formatting string given. If the format string and the date string passed does not match, then value error will arise.


Methods

Let us look at some of the important and frequently used methods of the datetime class.

1. date(y,m,d) 

Creates a date object with provided date, month and year.

2. time( h, min, sec, microsec)

Creates a time object with provided hour, minutes, seconds and micro seconds. The tzinfo will be none by default.

3. timetz(h, min, sec, microsec, tzinfo)

Creates a time object with timezone information.

4. replace( year, month, day, hour, min, sec, microsec, tzinfo)

All the parameters are optional. You can specify which one among these has to be replaced and the new value. After replacing it has to be assigned to the datetime object to see the changes.



5. astimezone(tz)

Returns the local date and time to the specified tz(time zone). The tzinfo class has to be implemented so that any of its methods do not return none.

Setting time zones

The time zone name can be set using a module named  dateutil. The time zones list will be available in this link and you can choose one among that. Look at the example below.


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