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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Let's Build a Timed Quiz App Harder Time Machine

Posted by Em Noble
Em Noble
6,918 Points

can someone please assist?

not sure how to do this any other way.

time_machine.py 
import datetime

starter = datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 21, 16, 29)

# Remember, you can't set "years" on a timedelta!
# Consider a year to be 365 days.

## Example
# time_machine(5, "minutes") => datetime(2015, 10, 21, 16, 34)
def time_machine(i,st):
    st = str(st)
    td = datetime.timedelta(st=i)
    return starter + td

1 Answer

Mel Rumsey
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Mel Rumsey
Treehouse Moderator

Hey Em Noble! So this one is tricky. It takes an int and a string. First, the st won't need to be converted to a string because what is entered will already be a string. But the main issue lies with this line: datetime.timedelta(st=i)

Consider that time_machine is being called with the following: time_machine(4, "minutes") time_machine(7, "hours") time_machine(1, "days") time_machine(2, "years")

This function would be trying to create a timedelta with "minutes"=4. This will not work because timedelta does not take a string. It takes days, hours, minutes as attributes. For example to do the one with hours, we would want it to say datetime.timedelta(hours, 7) rather than datetime.timedelta("hours", 7).

In order to do this we need some if and elif statements that check if the string is equal to "minutes", "hours", "days", or "years", set the timedelta or td accordingly.

Remember that if "years" is entered in, it will need to get converted to years by multiplying by 365.

Then you can return the starter + td.

Hopefully this helps!