This is a pretty handy tool for calculating how long something has been playing or how much time is left until an event starts. Let’s say you want to know how many days, hours, minutes and seconds have passed since the movie started. You can use timedeltas to calculate this!
To set the stage, let’s create a start_time variable that represents when the movie began:
# Import the datetime module from the standard library
from datetime import datetime
# Create a variable named start_time and assign it a datetime object representing May 3rd, 2021 at 9am
start_time = datetime(2021, 5, 3, 9)
# The datetime object takes in four arguments: year, month, day, and hour
# The start_time variable now holds the specific date and time we want to use for our calculations
Now let’s create a current time variable that represents when you checked the movie’s runtime:
# Import the datetime module to use its functions
import datetime
# Create a variable to store the current time using the datetime.now() function
current_time = datetime.now()
# The datetime.now() function returns the current date and time in a datetime object
# This allows us to store and manipulate the current time for later use in our script
To calculate how long the movie has been playing, we can subtract our start time from our current time using timedeltas!
# Import the datetime module to use for time calculations
import datetime
# Set the start time of the movie as a datetime object
start_time = datetime.datetime(2021, 9, 1, 18, 30)
# Get the current time as a datetime object
current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
# Calculate the movie runtime by subtracting the start time from the current time
movie_runtime = current_time - start_time
# Print the movie runtime in a user-friendly format
print(f"The movie has been playing for {movie_runtime}")
# Output: The movie has been playing for 0:00:00.000001
# This output shows the movie has been playing for a very short time, as the start and current times are set to the same time.
This will output something like: “The movie has been playing for 2 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes and 48 seconds.”
But what if you want to calculate how much time is left until an event starts? Let’s say we have a concert that starts at 7pm on May 6th. We can create a start_time variable for this as well:
# Create a variable for the start time of the concert
concert_start = datetime(2021, 5, 6, 19) # May 6th at 7pm in 2021
# Create a variable for the current time
current_time = datetime.now()
# Calculate the time difference between the current time and the concert start time
time_left = concert_start - current_time
# Convert the time difference into days, hours, minutes, and seconds
days = time_left.days
hours = time_left.seconds // 3600
minutes = (time_left.seconds // 60) % 60
seconds = time_left.seconds % 60
# Print the time left until the concert starts
print("The concert will start in {} days, {} hours, {} minutes, and {} seconds.".format(days, hours, minutes, seconds))
To calculate how much time is left until the concert starts, we can subtract our current time from our start time using timedeltas!
# Import the datetime module to use for time calculations
import datetime
# Set the start time of the concert as a datetime object
concert_start = datetime.datetime(2021, 9, 1, 19, 30)
# Get the current time as a datetime object
current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
# Calculate the time difference between the current time and the concert start time
concert_countdown = concert_start - current_time
# Print the remaining time until the concert starts in a user-friendly format
print(f"The concert starts in {concert_countdown}")
This will output something like: “The concert starts in 1 day, 2 hours and 35 minutes.”
And that’s it! Timedeltas are a powerful tool for measuring time spans. They can be used to calculate how long something has been playing or how much time is left until an event starts. Give them a try next time you need to measure some time!