Measuring Elapsed time using Python 2.7 time module

Question

I am trying to find the difference between two times using time module and then convert it to datetime format using strftime but I get a strange output for elapsed time starting from 1970, what is the best way to find elapsed time using python?

start_time = time()
info('My Start Time ' + datetime.fromtimestamp(start_time).strftime('%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S'))
sleep(5)
elapsed_time = time() - start_time
info('My Elapsed Time' + datetime.fromtimestamp(elapsed_time).strftime('%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S'))

Output is

 [2016-03-17 00:45:16.828277] INFO: Generic: My Start Time 17-03-2016 11:45:16 
 [2016-03-17 00:45:21.832503] INFO: Generic: My Elapsed Time 01-01-1970 10:00:05

Answer 1

Time intervals are different to times. It doesn't really make sense to convert a time interval like elapsed_time to a datetime.

Your script can be simplified considerably by using the datetime module's datetime and timedelta objects. When you subtract one datetime from another the result is a timedelta.

from time import sleep
from datetime import datetime

start_time = datetime.now()
print('My Start Time', start_time)
sleep(5)

stop_time = datetime.now()
print('My Stop Time', stop_time)

elapsed_time = stop_time - start_time
print('My Elapsed Time', elapsed_time)    

output

My Start Time 2016-03-17 12:28:01.262090
My Stop Time 2016-03-17 12:28:06.265964
My Elapsed Time 0:00:05.003874

Please see the docs for timedelta to see more examples of what you can do with these objects.