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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Dates and Times Today and Tomorrow

sidni ahmed
sidni ahmed
3,329 Points

getting datetime without creating variable

in this video we have made variables:

now = datetime.datetime.now() today = datetime.datetime.today()

by creating these variables we can do things like:

now.date() now.timestamp today.hour today.month

my question is that here we have made variables, but is there a way just to get the same output as 'now' and 'today' by just accessing the datetime library and not creating a variable. how would you do this? Thanks

2 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,457 Points

You can access the values by using the datetime methods directly;

# print 'now'
print(datetime.datetime.now())
# print date
print(datetime.datetime.now().date())
# print hour
print(datetime.datetime.today().hour)
# print month
print(datetime.datetime.today().month)

As Chris stated above, you can access the methods directly, but remember, when you store the value in a variable, you're storing a particular value called by that method. now = datetime.datetime.now() will always return the save value as long as you don't reassign now, whereas calling the method directly gives back the value at that time, each time.