How to specify date and time in python?

Question

What is the object used in Python to specify date (and time) in Python?

For instance, to create an object that holds a given date and time, (let's say '05/10/09 18:00').

As per S.Lott's request, so far I have:

class Some:
    date =

I stop there. After the "=" sign for, I realize I didn't knew what the right object was ;)

Answer 1

Simple example:

>>> import datetime
# 05/10/09 18:00
>>> d = datetime.datetime(2009, 10, 5, 18, 00)
>>> print d.year, d.month, d.day, d.hour, d.second
2009 10 5 18 0
>>> print d.isoformat(' ')
2009-10-05 18:00:00
>>> 

Answer 2

Nick D has the official way of handling your problem. If you want to pass in a string like you did in your question, the dateutil module (http://labix.org/python-dateutil) has excellent support for that kind of thing.

For examples, I'm going to copy and paste from another answer I gave a while back now:

Simple example:

>>> parse("Thu Sep 25 2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep 25 2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep 2003", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("2003", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

To ambigous:

>>> parse("10-09-2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 10, 9, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-2003", dayfirst=True)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 10, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-03")
datetime.datetime(2003, 10, 9, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-03", yearfirst=True)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 3, 0, 0)

To all over the board:

>>> parse("Wed, July 10, '96")
datetime.datetime(1996, 7, 10, 0, 0)

>>> parse("1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1996, 7, 10, 15, 8, 56)

>>> parse("Tuesday, April 12, 1952 AD 3:30:42pm PST", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1952, 4, 12, 15, 30, 42)

>>> parse("November 5, 1994, 8:15:30 am EST", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1994, 11, 5, 8, 15, 30)

>>> parse("3rd of May 2001")
datetime.datetime(2001, 5, 3, 0, 0)

>>> parse("5:50 A.M. on June 13, 1990")
datetime.datetime(1990, 6, 13, 5, 50)

Take a look at the documentation for it here:

http://labix.org/python-dateutil#head-c0e81a473b647dfa787dc11e8c69557ec2c3ecd2

Answer 3

Look at the datetime module; there are datetime, date and timedelta class definitions.