Basic usage: Get current date and time

import datetime

datetime_object = datetime.datetime.now()
print(datetime_object)

import datetime

date_object = datetime.date.today()
print(date_object)

Commonly used classes in the datetime module

datetime.date Class

A date object represents a date (year, month, and day)

import datetime

d = datetime.date(2019, 4, 13)
print(d)

datetime.time class

A time object represents the local time.

from datetime import time

a = time(11, 34, 56)

datetime.datetime class

Contins information of both date and time objects.

a = datetime(2018, 11, 28)

datetime.timedelta class

A timedelta object represents the difference between two dates or times.

from datetime import datetime, date

t1 = date(year = 2018, month = 7, day = 12)
t2 = date(year = 2017, month = 12, day = 23)
t3 = t1 - t2

print(type(t3))
>>> <class 'datetime.timedelta'>

Python format datetime

strftime(): convert datetime to string

Defined under classes date, datetime, and time, this method creates a formatted string from a given date, datetime, and time objects.

t = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S")

strptime(): convert string to datetime

Defined only under datetime object.

from datetime import datetime

date_string = "21 June, 2018"
date_object = datetime.strptime(date_string, "%d %B, %Y")

strptime() methods takes two arguments:
1. a string representing date and time
2. format code equivalent to the first argument

Python's strftime directives

Handling timezone in Python

Rather than handling timezone yourself, try using pytZ module along with datetime module.

import pytz

local = datetime.now()
tz_NY = pytz.timezone('America/New_York')
datetime_NY = datetime.now(tz_NY)