Welcome to the Treehouse Community

The Treehouse Community is a meeting place for developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels to get support. Collaborate here on code errors or bugs that you need feedback on, or asking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project. Join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today. (Note: Only Treehouse students can comment or ask questions, but non-students are welcome to browse our conversations.)

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and a supportive community. Start your free trial today.

Python Dates and Times in Python Dates and Times Timedelta Minute

Jason Smith
Jason Smith
7,697 Points
Posted by Jason Smith
Jason Smith
7,697 Points

name 'timedelta' is not defined. Any hints? Help appreciated

i imported the library, so i'm not sure why it doesn't accept what i gave it.

minutes.py 
import datetime
def minutes(datetime_1,datetime_2):
    seconds_1 = timedelta.totalseconds(datetime_1)
    seconds_2 = timedelta.totalseconds(datetime_2)
    return round((seconds_2 - seconds_1) / 60)

2 Answers

Jason Smith
Jason Smith
7,697 Points
Jason Smith
Jason Smith
7,697 Points

where did you get the value 5 from?

Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points

5 was absolutely arbitrary; sorry for any confusion.

Two options for importing:

Option 1 (recommended): import the entire datetime module requires explicit datetime.timedelta below

 import datetime
def minutes(datetime_1,datetime_2):
    seconds_1 = datetime.timedelta.seconds(datetime_1)
...

Option 2: from the datetime module, importing only the timedelta class then timedelta on its own will work

from datetime import timedelta
def minutes(datetime_1,datetime_2):
    seconds_1 = timedelta.seconds(datetime_1)
...

Either way, seconds is a necessary attribute name, and totalseconds will not work.

Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points
Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points

Hi Jason,

I think I found the problem:

import datetime
seconds_1 = datetime.timedelta(seconds=5)

datetime is the module that contains the class timedelta. timedelta receives a parameter named seconds (among others)

You can see the docs here.