How to compare dates in Django

Question

I would like to compare a date to the current date in Django, preferably in the template, but it is also possible to do before rendering the template. If the date has already passed, I want to say "In the past" while if it is in the future, I want to give the date.

I was hoping one could do something like this:

{% if listing.date <= now %} 
     In the past 
{% else %} 
     {{ listing.date|date:"d M Y" }} 
{% endif %}

With now being today's date, but this does not work. I couldn't find anything about this in the Django docs. Can anyone give some advice?

Answer 1

Compare date in the view, and pass something like in_the_past (boolean) to the extra_context.

Or better add it to the model as a property.

@property
def is_past_due(self):
    if date.now() > self.date:
        result = True
    else:
        result = False
    return result

Then in the view:

{% if listing.is_past_due %}
    In the past
{% else %}
    {{ listing.date|date:"d M Y" }}
{% endif %}

Basicly the template is not the place for date comparsion IMO.

Answer 2

You can always pass datetime.datetime.now (since django models use Python's standard datetime object).

Using render_to_response, you could do something like this (after importing datetime):

return render_to_response('template.html', {'now': datetime.datetime.now()})

Now that you have access to "now" inside of the template, you can compare dates just like you did in your examples.

Furthermore, if you use RequestContext in your views - you will be able to add "now" as a context_processor if you need this in multiple files. This will add "now" to any template rendered with a RequestContext.

However, it is more realistic that you simply just get the list of records that are before now in your original queryset and avoid querying for useless data in the first place:

listing.objects.filter(date__lt=datetime.datetime.now())