How to check if a date time is before midday

Question

I have a datetime object in python and I would like create a function to check whether the input is in the morning or afternoon on the day of the datetime (ie, before or after 12pm). How to I manually create the time 12:00 and can I use greater than or lesser than symbols for this (<, >)?

Answer 1

Call the datetime.datetime.time() method on the datetime object and compare it with a datetime.time() object:

if dt.time() < datetime.time(12):

or just look at the datetime.datetime.hour attribute:

if dt.hour < 12

The latter is simpler, the former gives you more flexibility to compare against times that include a minute component:

if dt.time() < datetime.time(12, 30)

Demo:

>>> import datetime
>>> dt = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> dt
datetime.datetime(2014, 2, 10, 10, 39, 30, 768979)
>>> dt.time() < datetime.time(12)
True
>>> dt.hour < 12
True
>>> dt = dt.replace(hour=20)
>>> dt
datetime.datetime(2014, 2, 10, 20, 39, 30, 768979)
>>> dt.time() < datetime.time(12)
False
>>> dt.hour < datetime.hour
False