datetime is a built-in module in the Python standard library. It defines four main object classes, each with many methods:

• date - for years, months and days
• time - for hours, minutes, seconds and fractions
• datetime - for dates and time together
• timedelta - for date and/or time intervals

date object

We can make a date object by specifying a year,month and day. These values are then available as attributes:

from datetime import date

birthday = date(1987, 4, 26)

print(birthday)
# 1987-04-26

print(birthday.year)
# 1987

print(birthday.month)
# 4

print(birthday.day)
# 26

isoformat()

We can print a date with its isoformat() method.

from datetime import date

birthday = date(1987, 4, 26)

print(birthday.isoformat())
# 1987-04-26

The iso refers to ISO 8601, an international standard for representing dates and times.

today()

We can generate today’s date using the today() method.

from datetime import date

today = date.today()

print(today)
# 2021-08-27

timedelta

We can add some time interval to a date using the timedelta object.

from datetime import date, timedelta

today = date.today()

one_day = timedelta(days=1)

tomorrow = today + one_day

print(tomorrow)
# 2021-08-28

yesterday = today - one_day

print(yesterday)
# 2021-08-26

time object

The datetime module’s time object is used to represent a time of the day:

from datetime import time

noon = time(12, 0, 0)

print(noon)
# 12:00:00

print(noon.hour)
# 12

print(noon.minute)
# 0

print(noon.second)
# 0

print(noon.microsecond)
# 0

If we don’t provide all the arguments, time assumes all the rest are zero.

datetime object

We can generate the current date and time using the now() method of the datetime object.

from datetime import datetime

current_time_date =  datetime.now()

print(current_time_date)
# 2021-08-27 01:45:10.524517