How do I calculate number of days betwen two dates using Python?

Question

If I have two dates (ex. '8/18/2008' and '9/26/2008') what is the best way to get the difference measured in days?

Answer 1

If you have two date objects, you can just subtract them.

from datetime import date

d0 = date(2008,8,18)
d1 = date(2008, 9, 26)
delta = d0 - d1
print delta.days

The relevant section of the docs: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-datetime.html

Answer 2

Using the power of datetime:

from datetime import datetime
date_format = "%m/%d/%Y"
a = datetime.strptime('8/18/2008', date_format)
b = datetime.strptime('9/26/2008', date_format)
delta = b - a
print delta.days # that's it

Answer 3

Days until Christmas:

>>> import datetime
>>> today = datetime.date.today()
>>> someday = datetime.date(2008, 12, 25)
>>> diff = someday - today
>>> diff.days
86

More arithmetic here.

Answer 4

You want the datetime module.

>>> from datetime import datetime 
>>> datetime(2008,08,18) - datetime(2008,09,26) 
datetime.timedelta(4)

Or other example:

Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Feb 22 2008, 07:57:53) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5363)] on darwin 
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. 
>>> import datetime 
>>> today = datetime.date.today() 
>>> print today 
2008-09-01 
>>> last_year = datetime.date(2007, 9, 1) 
>>> print today - last_year 
366 days, 0:00:00

As pointed out here