A date in Python is not a data type of its own, but we can import a module named datetime to work with dates as date objects.
Import the datetime module and display the current date:
import datetime
x = datetime.datetime.now()
print(x)
==========o/p========
2019-11-08 15:45:52.021931
Date Output :
When we execute the code from the example above the result will be::'2019-11-08 15:45:52.021931'
The date contains year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and microsecond.
The datetime module has many methods to return information about the date object.
Here are a few examples, you will learn more about them later in this chapter:
turn the year and name of weekday:
import datetime
x = datetime.datetime.now()
print(x.year)
print(x.strftime("%A"))
========o/p=========
2019
Friday
Creating Date Objects :
To create a date, we can use the datetime() class (constructor) of the datetime module.
The datetime() class requires three parameters to create a date: year, month, day.
Create a date object:
import datetime
x = datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 17)
print(x)
========o/p========
2019-08-11 00:00:00
The datetime() class also takes parameters for time and timezone (hour, minute, second, microsecond, tzone), but they are optional, and has a default value of 0, (None for timezone).
The strftime() Method :
The datetime object has a method for formatting date objects into readable strings.
The method is called strftime(), and takes one parameter, format, to specify the format of the returned string:
Display the name of the month:
import datetime
x = datetime.datetime(2019, 11, 8)
print(x.strftime("%B"))
========o/p========
November
NOTE : All the outputs are displayed according to the present date , time , month , year , hours , minutes , seconds and microseconds (AS WE MENTIONED now( )).