Python Date and Time

Python provides the datetime module to work with real dates and times. Python enables us to schedule our Python script to run at a particular time. The date is not a data type, but we can work with the date objects by importing the modules named datetime, time, and calendar.

In this section of the tutorial, we will discuss how to work with the date and time objects in Python.

The datetime classes are classified into six main classes.

• Date – It is a simple date. It consists of the year, month, and day as attributes.
• Time – It is a perfect time, assuming every day has precisely 24*60*60 seconds. It has hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo as attributes.
• datetime – It is a grouping of date and time, along with the attributes year, month, day, hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo.
• timedelta – It represents the difference between two dates, times, or datetime instances to microsecond resolution.
• tzinfo – It provides time zone information objects.
• Timezone – It is included in the new version of Python. It is the class that implements the tzinfo abstract base class.

Tick

In Python, the time instants are counted since 12 AM, 1st January 1970. The function time() of the module time returns the total number of ticks spent since 12 AM, 1st January 1970. A tick can be seen as the smallest unit to measure time.

Python Tick Example

Let us take an example to demonstrate the tick in Python.

import time;    

#prints the number of ticks spent since 12 AM, 1st January 1970    

print(time.time())

Output:

1585928913.6519969

How to get the current time?

The localtime() functions of the time module are used to get the current time tuple. Consider the following example to get the current time using the localtime() function.

import time;      

      

#returns a time tuple       

      

print(time.localtime(time.time()))

Output:

time.struct-time(tm-year=2020, tm-mon=4, tm-mday=3, tm-hour=21, tm-min=21, tm-sec=40, tm-wday=4, tm-yday=94, tm-isdst=0)

Time tuple

The time is treated as the tuple of 9 numbers. Let’s look at the members of the time tuple.

Index	Attribute	Values
0	Year	4 digit (for example 2018)
1	Month	1 to 12
2	Day	1 to 31
3	Hour	0 to 23
4	Minute	0 to 59
5	Second	0 to 60
6	Day of weak	0 to 6
7	Day of year	1 to 366
8	Daylight savings	-1, 0, 1 , or -1

Getting formatted time

The time can be formatted by using the asctime() function of the time module. It returns the formatted time for the time tuple being passed.

Python Example to Getting Formatted Time

Let us take an example to demonstrate how to get formatted time in Python.

import time      

  #returns the formatted time        

    

print(time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time())))

Output:

Wed Sep 10 13:52:19 2025

Python sleep time

The sleep() method of the time module is used to stop the execution of the script for a given amount of time. The output will be delayed for the number of seconds provided as a float.

Python sleep() time Method Example

Let us take an example to demonstrate the sleep() time method in Python.

import time    

for i in range(0,5):    

    print(i)    

    #Each element will be printed after 1 second    

    time.sleep(1)

Output:

0
1
2
3
4

The datetime Module

The datetime module enables us to create custom date objects and perform various operations on dates, such as comparison. In order to work with dates as date objects, we have to import the datetime module into the Python source code.

Python datetime Module Example

Consider the following example to get the datetime object representation for the current time.

import datetime  

#returns the current datetime object     

print(datetime.datetime.now())

Output:

2025-09-10 13:54:25.140259

Creating date objects

We can create the date objects by passing the desired date in the datetime constructor for which the date objects are to be created.

Python Example to Create Date Objects

Here, we are going to take an example that demonstrate gow to create date objects in Python.

import datetime      

#returns the datetime object for the specified date      

print(datetime.datetime(2025,9,10))

Output:

2025-09-10 00:00:00

Python datetime Module Example with Custom Date and Time

We can also specify the time along with the date to create the datetime object. Consider the following example.

import datetime    

      

#returns the datetime object for the specified time        

      

print(datetime.datetime(2025,9,10,1,58,20))

Output:

2025-09-10 01:58:20

Explanation:

In the above code, we have passed in the datetime() function year, month, day, hour, minute, and millisecond attributes in a sequential manner.

Comparison of two dates

We can compare two dates by using the comparison operators like >, >=, <, and <=.

Python Example for Comparing Two Dates

Let us take an example to demonstrate how to compare two dates in Python.

from datetime import datetime as dt      

#Compares the time. If the time is in between 8 AM and 4 PM, then it prints working hours; otherwise, it prints fun hours      

if dt(dt.now().year,dt.now().month,dt.now().day,8)<dt.now()<dt(dt.now().year,dt.now().month,dt.now().day,16):      

    print("Working hours....")      

else:      

    print("fun hours")

Output:

Working hours....

Calendar module

Python provides a calendar object that contains various methods to work with calendars.

Calender Module Example in Python

Consider the following example to print the calendar for the last month of 2018.

import calendar;      

cal = calendar.month(2025,9)      

#printing the calendar of December 2018      

print(cal)

Output:

Printing the calendar for the whole year

The prcal() method of the calendar module is used to print the calendar of the entire year. The year for which the calendar is to be printed must be passed into this method.

import calendar      

#printing the calendar of the year 2025      

s = calendar.prcal(2025)

Output: