How to initialize datetime 0000-00-00 00:00:00 in Python?
Question:
I’ve been trying to use the datetime library in python to create a datetime object with this value: ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’. However, I keep getting an error that the year is out of range. How can I properly initialize this?
Answers:
There is no year 0, because people couldn’t figure out how to count properly back then.
The closest you can get:
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.min
datetime.datetime(1, 1, 1, 0, 0)
In datetime, the constant for MINYEAR is 1:
datetime.MINYEAR
The smallest year number allowed in a date or datetime object. MINYEAR
is 1.
To initialize the earliest possible date you would do:
import datetime
earliest_date = datetime.datetime.min
# OR
earliest_date = datetime.datetime(1,1,1,0,0)
print earliest_date.isoformat()
Which outputs:
0001-01-01T00:00:00
"How to initialize datetime 0000-00-00 00:00:00 in Python?"
No allowed, see manual datetime.
Alternative solution to the question is the minimum datetime:
>>> datetime.datetime.combine(datetime.date.min, datetime.time.min)
datetime.datetime(1, 1, 1, 0, 0)
found while reading:
https://docs.python.org/3.7/library/datetime.html#module-datetime
Old question, but I needed a minimum datetime object which is POSIX compliant, so I found I could get that from
datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0)
which gives 1st Jan 1970 00:00:00:0000. But you need to be really careful with this, the datetime object returned is naive (no tz info).
Add utc timezone when using this:
datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0).replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc)
[>] datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
Oddly, if you have to convert back to POSIX with timestamp() from a naive datetime, it throws an error for anything less than 2nd Jan 1970 1am
datetime(1970,1,2,1,0,0).timestamp()
[>] 86400.0
You can fix this by adding timezone:
datetime(1970,1,1).replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc).timestamp()
[>] 0.0
Also, in version 3.2, strftime() method was restricted to years >= 1000. (ref)
If you want to initialize a datetime.timedelta object, you can use the following statement:
lapseTime = datetime.now() - datetime.now()
lapseTime will be initialized to datetime.timedelta(0). You can then use lapseTime to do arithmetic calculations with other datetime objects.
I’ve been trying to use the datetime library in python to create a datetime object with this value: ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’. However, I keep getting an error that the year is out of range. How can I properly initialize this?
There is no year 0, because people couldn’t figure out how to count properly back then.
The closest you can get:
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.min
datetime.datetime(1, 1, 1, 0, 0)
In datetime, the constant for MINYEAR is 1:
datetime.MINYEAR
The smallest year number allowed in a date or datetime object. MINYEAR
is 1.
To initialize the earliest possible date you would do:
import datetime
earliest_date = datetime.datetime.min
# OR
earliest_date = datetime.datetime(1,1,1,0,0)
print earliest_date.isoformat()
Which outputs:
0001-01-01T00:00:00
"How to initialize datetime 0000-00-00 00:00:00 in Python?"
No allowed, see manual datetime.
Alternative solution to the question is the minimum datetime:
>>> datetime.datetime.combine(datetime.date.min, datetime.time.min)
datetime.datetime(1, 1, 1, 0, 0)
found while reading:
https://docs.python.org/3.7/library/datetime.html#module-datetime
Old question, but I needed a minimum datetime object which is POSIX compliant, so I found I could get that from
datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0)
which gives 1st Jan 1970 00:00:00:0000. But you need to be really careful with this, the datetime object returned is naive (no tz info).
Add utc timezone when using this:
datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0).replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc)
[>] datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
Oddly, if you have to convert back to POSIX with timestamp() from a naive datetime, it throws an error for anything less than 2nd Jan 1970 1am
datetime(1970,1,2,1,0,0).timestamp()
[>] 86400.0
You can fix this by adding timezone:
datetime(1970,1,1).replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc).timestamp()
[>] 0.0
Also, in version 3.2, strftime() method was restricted to years >= 1000. (ref)
If you want to initialize a datetime.timedelta object, you can use the following statement:
lapseTime = datetime.now() - datetime.now()
lapseTime will be initialized to datetime.timedelta(0). You can then use lapseTime to do arithmetic calculations with other datetime objects.