#100DaysOfCode in Python Transcripts
Chapter: Days 1-3: Playing with Datetimes
Lecture: Learning datetime and date

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0:00 Given datetime is part of the Python standard lib,
0:04 we don't actually have to do any setup here.
0:07 You'll see in the coming videos
0:09 that you will have to do setup steps,
0:12 create virtual environments and whatnot,
0:14 but given this is datetime, we don't really have to.
0:17 And, I think it'd be best for us to just work
0:20 in the Python shell here.
0:21 This is IDLE, the default Python IDE
0:25 that it ships with.
0:27 So, let's have a play with that.
0:29 Now, the first thing we're going to do
0:31 is we're going to import datetime.
0:34 But, we're actually going to do
0:37 from datetime import datetime, okay?
0:44 And, this is just going to make it a bit easier for us
0:46 when we're typing in the rest of our code.
0:48 And, just to get yourself prepared, let's just
0:52 from datetime import date
0:54 that's for a bit later in this video.
0:58 Alright so what is datetime, alright.
1:00 For those who are unaccustomed and unaware
1:03 datetime is just the Python library module that allows
1:07 you to deal with dates and times.
1:11 Pretty self-explanatory, right?
1:14 So, if you want to deal with just the dates
1:18 so, you know, today's date, let's call it
1:21 the 23rd of February 2018, not very specific.
1:26 Or if you want to deal with the time
1:29 that you've got to think about that
1:30 from a programming perspective, there is a difference, okay.
1:35 So, datetime allows us to deal with
1:38 the entire time set, the entire timeframe.
1:41 You're talking seconds, minutes, hours, days
1:44 all the way through to years, okay?
1:47 We can visualize that with datetime.today().
1:52 If we hit enter, there we go, we can see today's date.
1:57 The 24th of February 2018
2:01 but we also get this timestamp.
2:03 It's 10:17pm
2:05 and these are the extra seconds here.
2:08 So seconds, milliseconds and whatnot, okay?
2:12 Now I'm going to show you this, what kind of an object is this?
2:16 Well let's go, well first actually we have to assign that
2:20 to something that way so, we'll just go with today.
2:24 Here's datetime.today()
2:28 alright and then we'll type it out, so type today.
2:32 So it's a datetime object, okay?
2:35 And that's important because you can't mix these objects.
2:39 I'll point that out in just a minute.
2:42 So with this timestamp, there is more you can do with that.
2:46 And I'll show you that in the next video with timedelta.
2:51 Alright, but for now just understand that this is what your
2:53 standard datetime format will look like.
2:56 This is the sort of data you're going to get back.
2:59 And this is really useful for times when you want to
3:03 deal with say, subscriptions or anything like that
3:06 where it has to do with exact timestamps, or logging
3:10 or anything where you need to know
3:13 the time that something happened.
3:15 Going by the date of say, the 24th of February
3:19 is not accurate enough, okay, there is 24 hours
3:22 within that day so, a lot of things could have happened.
3:25 Alright, so we'll move on to the date part here.
3:30 So we'll just go today date, we'll create that variable.
3:34 Here's date.today(), so you can see straightaway
3:38 we're not using datetime, we're using the date section
3:43 okay, we're using the date option here.
3:45 So date.today()
3:48 and if we type that out
3:53 Today date, we can see
3:56 the different type of object here.
3:58 First one was a datetime and now it's a date object, okay?
4:04 And we can see what that looks like with today date.
4:09 And we have just the date string, okay?
4:12 So we don't have the extra time on the end.
4:15 And this is, again, very useful.
4:18 So you can see the distinction between the two of them.
4:21 Alright let's get ourselves a little bit of white space.
4:25 Now one really cool thing that I love about date
4:30 is that we can drill into it a little more, so we can go
4:36 today.month is 2.
4:41 So you can see we can actually tear it apart a bit.
4:44 So today.day
4:47 is 24 and then
4:51 today.year, and we get 2018.
4:57 So now you can sort of visualize how date can help you
4:59 in your projects, right, if you're not already using it.
5:03 It's actually really cool.
5:04 So one really, really cool thing that
5:07 has come in handy over time,
5:10 is the fact that you can do
5:11 a bit of math with your dates, alright.
5:15 So we'll go, let's just go something easy.
5:18 So Christmas, what's the date for Christmas?
5:21 It's the, we'll go year first, so 2018.
5:25 It's the month next, so 12.
5:29 And then it's the day, so 25th, alright.
5:35 Now one thing, if you had a look, this is ...
5:40 us specifying a date, this is us
5:42 assigning a date to a variable.
5:45 So now the Christmas variable is always going to
5:50 have this date assigned to it.
5:54 You can see that there, okay.
5:57 Now, this is really cool, so
6:00 We can actually go Christmas, cause we know that's
6:04 the end of this year, minus, today date.
6:10 Kay, and that's 304 days, it automatically called
6:15 on timedelta, so that's giving away something for the next
6:18 video but, carry on, 304 days.
6:22 Alright, and we can see that visualized a different way.
6:25 We can, and this is again giving more away
6:27 we can go Christmas
6:31 minus today
6:35 in days, so .days.
6:39 304 days, alright and this is really cool for something
6:43 such as this, I'm just going to copy and paste here
6:46 rather than type it all out for you, alright.
6:50 So if Christmas is not today date
6:55 well what can we do?
6:56 We can print a certain message.
6:58 Again, you can see this is useful for certain other projects
7:03 so print, sorry there are still this many days
7:09 (christmas minus today).days, until Christmas.
7:13 Okay, and then else ...
7:16 We'll copy and paste this as well.
7:20 We're going to print some sort of message, alright.
7:25 "Yay, it's Christmas."
7:27 So, by hitting enter, sorry there are still 304
7:32 the same value here, until Christmas.
7:35 I've obviously left out the word 'days'
7:37 so that's my mistake, but
7:38 sorry there are still 304 days until Christmas.
7:42 If I happen to wait another, you know, ha ha ha ha
7:46 that many days, 304 days
7:48 we would then get this message here.
7:51 So this is date and this is datetime.
7:54 Very, very tedious at times, I want to say
7:59 but so useful, so this is a great place to start
8:02 manipulating your code, manipulate your dates
8:06 and have some fun with it.
8:08 And in the next video we're going to look at datetime.