Calculation of remaining time until birthday

The following program calculates the days, minutes and seconds between two dates. To calculate the seconds, the total_seconds() method is called through the timedelta object.

from datetime import datetime

today = datetime(2022,12,15)
bday = datetime(2023,3,20)

difference = bday - today 

print(str(difference) + " days until your birthday")
print(str(difference.total_seconds()/60) + " minutes until your birthday")
print(str(difference.total_seconds()) + " seconds until your birthday")
Code Explanation
Creating Datetime Objects
  • today: This variable is assigned a datetime object representing December 15, 2022. This datetime object is created using specific year, month, and day values, representing the current date for the purpose of the calculation.
  • bday: Similarly, this variable holds a datetime object for March 20, 2023, set as the target future date, such as a birthday.
Calculating the Difference Between Dates
  • difference: This is a timedelta object obtained by subtracting today from bday. The resulting timedelta object represents the time span between these two dates.
Printing the Time Until the Birthday
  • The first print statement converts difference to a string that naturally represents the duration in days (and potentially hours, minutes, and seconds, though days are the primary unit here). It appends ” days until your birthday” to this string, providing a user-friendly message indicating the number of days until the birthday.
  • The second print statement displays the total time until the birthday in minutes. It achieves this by calling difference.total_seconds() to get the total duration in seconds and then dividing by 60 to convert this duration to minutes. The result is converted to a string and concatenated with ” minutes until your birthday”, offering a detailed minute count down to the event.
  • The third print statement simply prints the total duration in seconds, accessed by difference.total_seconds(). This value is converted to a string and appended with ” seconds until your birthday”, providing a precise second-by-second countdown to the birthday.
Output
95 days, 0:00:00 days until your birthday
136800.0 minutes until your birthday
8208000.0 seconds until your birthday