Data & Time | Python Tutorial

Dates and timings are very important for computers. Computers keep track of date and time for files, documents, and various other operations. Similarly, Python uses date and time to perform several operations.

Example:

import time
print(time.time())

Output:

1658659152.7263992

So, what can we understand from the above output? What does a bunch of random numbers mean?

These numbers are nothing but the number of ticks since the start of January 1, 1970, also called the epoch.

Now, one might ask what are ticks?

Ticks are floating point numbers measured in units of seconds for time intervals.

We can also pass the epoch inside the ctime() function (or simply use the ctime() function) to print the current time in a human-readable format.

Example:

import time
print(time.ctime())

Output:

Sun Jul 24 16:24:50 2022

time.sleep():

The sleep() function inside the time module is used to delay the execution of the current time thread by the given number of seconds.

Example:

import time
 
time.sleep(10)
print(time.ctime())

Output:

Sun Jul 24 16:24:50 2022

As we can see, the sleep() will delay the execution by 10 seconds.

Time.struct_time Class:

Index	Field	Attribute	Value	Meaning	Format Codes
0	Year	tm_year	0000, …, 9999	Four digit year	%Y
1	Month	tm_mon	1 – January, …, 12 - December	Months in a year	%m
2	Day	tm_mday	1, 2, 3, …, 29, 31	Days in a month	%d
3	Hour	tm_hour	0, 1, 2, …, 22, 23	Hours in a day	%H
4	Minute	tm_min	0, 1, 2, …, 58, 59	Minutes in an hour	%M
5	Second	tm_sec	0, 1, 2, …, 60, 61	Seconds in a minute	%S
6	Day of Week	tm_wday	0 – Monday, …, 6 – Sunday	Days in a week	%w
7	Day of Year	tm_yday	1, 2, 3, …, 355, 356	Days in a year	%j
8	Daylight savings	tm_isdst	-1, 0, 1

time.localtime():

To get the output of local time in struct_time format, use the localtime() function.

Example:

import time
 
print(time.localtime(1658672956.8853111))

Output:

time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=19, tm_min=59, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=205, tm_isdst=0)

time.gmtime():

To get the output of Coordinated Universal Time in struct_time format, use the gmtime() function.

Example:

import time
 
print(time.gmtime(1658672956.8853111))

Output:

time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=14, tm_min=29, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=205, tm_isdst=0)

time.mktime():

We also have the reverse of localtime() function that prints seconds passed since epoch in local time.

Example:

import time
 
local_time = (2022, 7, 24, 20, 14, 39, 6, 205, 0)
print(time.mktime(local_time))

Output:

1658673879.0

time.asctime():

The asctime() function takes struct_time and prints a single string representing it.

Example:

import time
 
local_time = (2022, 7, 24, 20, 14, 39, 6, 205, 0)
print(time.asctime(local_time))

Output:

Sun Jul 24 20:14:39 2022

time.strptime():

This function parses a string based on a given format and returns it in struct_time format.

Example:

import time
 
local_time = "24 July, 2022"
print(time.strptime(local_time, "%d %B, %Y"))

Output:

time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=205, tm_isdst=-1)

Calendar:

We can even print a calendar for a particular month. This can be done using the calendar module.

Example:

import calendar
 
print(calendar.month(2022, 7))

Output:

     July 2022
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
              1   2   3
 4   5   6   7   8   9  10
11  12  13  14  15  16  17
18  19  20  21  22  23  24
25  26  27  28  29  30  31