Find Time Difference Using Python

It is very easy to do date and time maths in Python using time delta objects. Whenever you want to add or subtract to a date/time, use a DateTime.datetime(), then add or subtract date time.time delta() instances. A time delta object represents a duration, the difference between two dates or times. The time delta constructor has the following function signature

DateTime.timedelta([days[, seconds[, microseconds[, milliseconds[, minutes[, hours[, weeks]]]]]]])¶

Note: All arguments are optional and default to 0. Arguments may be ints, longs, or floats, and may be positive or negative. You can read more about it here https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#timedelta-objects

Example

An example of using the time delta objects and dates

import datetime
old_time = datetime.datetime.now()
print(old_time)
new_time = old_time - datetime.timedelta(hours=2, minutes=10)
print(new_time)

Output

This will give the output

2018-01-04 11:09:00.694602
2018-01-04 08:59:00.694602

time delta() arithmetic is not supported for date time.time() objects; if you need to use offsets from an existing date time.time() object, just use date time.datetime.combine() to form a date time.date time() instance, do your calculations, and 'extract' the time again with the .time() method.

Subtracting 2 date time objects gives a time delta object. This time delta object can be used to find the exact difference between the 2 date times. 

example

t1 = datetime.datetime.now()
t2 = datetime.datetime.now()
print(t1 - t2)
print(type(t1 - t2))

Output

This will give the output

-1 day, 23:59:56.653627
<class 'datetime.timedelta'>