Days between two dates?

Question

What’s the shortest way to see how many full days have passed between two dates?
Here’s what I’m doing now.

math.floor((b - a).total_seconds()/float(86400))

Asked By: Bemmu

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Source

Answer 1

Assuming you’ve literally got two date objects, you can subtract one from the other and query the resulting timedelta object for the number of days:

>>> from datetime import date
>>> a = date(2011,11,24)
>>> b = date(2011,11,17)
>>> a-b
datetime.timedelta(7)
>>> (a-b).days
7

And it works with datetimes too — I think it rounds down to the nearest day:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> a = datetime(2011,11,24,0,0,0)
>>> b = datetime(2011,11,17,23,59,59)
>>> a-b
datetime.timedelta(6, 1)
>>> (a-b).days
6

Answered By: Paul D. Waite

Answer 2

Try:

(b-a).days

I tried with b and a of type datetime.date.

Answered By: M S

Answer 3

Do you mean full calendar days, or groups of 24 hours?

For simply 24 hours, assuming you’re using Python’s datetime, then the timedelta object already has a days property:

days = (a - b).days

For calendar days, you’ll need to round a down to the nearest day, and b up to the nearest day, getting rid of the partial day on either side:

roundedA = a.replace(hour = 0, minute = 0, second = 0, microsecond = 0)
roundedB = b.replace(hour = 0, minute = 0, second = 0, microsecond = 0)
days = (roundedA - roundedB).days

Answered By: DNS

Answer 4

Referencing my comments on other answers. This is how I would work out the difference in days based on 24 hours and calender days. the days attribute works well for 24 hours and the function works best for calendar checks.

from datetime import timedelta, datetime

def cal_days_diff(a,b):

    A = a.replace(hour = 0, minute = 0, second = 0, microsecond = 0)
    B = b.replace(hour = 0, minute = 0, second = 0, microsecond = 0)
    return (A - B).days

if __name__ == '__main__':

    x = datetime(2013, 06, 18, 16, 00)
    y = datetime(2013, 06, 19, 2, 00)

    print (y - x).days          # 0
    print cal_days_diff(y, x)   # 1 

    z = datetime(2013, 06, 20, 2, 00)

    print (z - x).days          # 1
    print cal_days_diff(z, x)   # 2

Answered By: Matt Alcock

Days between two dates?

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