Difference between dates/times in Python

Question

I need to calculate the difference between two dates in python, but always some error.

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> data1 = datetime(2015, 8, 5, 8, 12, 23)
>>> data2 = datetime(2015, 8, 9, 6, 13, 23)
>>> difdata = data2 - data1
>>> '{0}:{2}'.format(*str(difdata).split())
'3:22:01:00'

I want to do so, but when I try to open in other error systems, I want to create a timestamp with the dates but am not getting.

Answer 1

When you subtract dates in format datetime an object is returned timedelta who has a method total_seconds() that gives you the total seconds:

from datetime import datetime
s = '2015/08/05 08:12:23'
t = '2015/08/09 08:13:23'
f = '%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S'
dif = (datetime.strptime(t, f) - datetime.strptime(s, f)).total_seconds()
print(dif)

Answer 2

I found a solution by searching the DATETIME function

s = '2015/08/05 08:12:23'
t = '2015/08/09 08:13:23'

date1 = int(datetime.datetime.strptime(s, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S').strftime("%s"))
date2 = int(datetime.datetime.strptime(t, '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S').strftime("%s"))

difdate = date2 - date1

print(difdate)

So it’s easy to turn and calculate any difference.

Answer 3

Another interesting way to resolve this issue is by using the library dateutil.

That way we can implement the following code:

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

a = "2015-08-05 08:12:23"
b = "2015-08-09 08:12:23"
f = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

ini = datetime.strptime(a, f)
fim = datetime.strptime(b, f)

di = abs(relativedelta(ini, fim))

print(f'{di.years} anos, {di.months} meses, {di.days} dias, {di.hours} horas, '
      f'{di.minutes} minutos e {di.seconds} segundos.')

Note that the code receives two dates and times in type string, converts them into objects datetime, and then - with the help of the method relativedelta - calculates the difference.

Note also that the result of this method consists of a tuple, with which we can later retrieve each of its elements.

The result of print() is nothing more than the values of each element of the previously generated tuple.