Get current date (now)

The following example queries and outputs the individual elements of a datetime object, such as year, month, day, hours, minutes and seconds of the current time.

Code Example 1

import datetime

dt = datetime.datetime.now()

print("current datetime: " + str(dt))
print("current year: " + str(dt.year))
print("current month: " + str(datetime.datetime.now().month))
print("current day: " + str(dt.day))
print("hours: " + str(dt.hour))
print("minutes: " + str(dt.minute))
print("seconds: " + str(dt.second))

Code Explanation

Retrieving the Current Datetime

• dt: This variable is assigned the current date and time using datetime.datetime.now(). This function provides the current local datetime with precision up to the microsecond.

Displaying Current Date and Time Information

• Print Current Datetime: The first print statement displays the complete current datetime as a string by concatenating “current datetime: ” with the string representation (str(dt)) of the datetime object.
• Print Current Year: This prints “current year: ” followed by the year component of the dt object. The year attribute of a datetime object returns the year as an integer.
• Print Current Month: Demonstrates fetching the month component directly from a new call to datetime.datetime.now().month, ensuring it prints the current month. This approach is slightly redundant since the month could have been extracted from dt, similar to the year and day.
• Print Current Day: Outputs “current day: ” followed by the day component of the dt object, accessed through the day attribute, which returns the day of the month as an integer.
• Print Hours, Minutes, and Seconds: The script continues by printing the hour, minute, and second components of dt. These are accessed using the hour, minute, and second attributes respectively, which return each component as integers.

This script effectively displays various components of the current date and time, useful in scenarios such as logging, timestamping events, or simply for displaying the current time on user interfaces.

Output

current datetime: 2022-12-10 11:29:43.074482
current year: 2022
current month: 12
current day: 10
hours: 11
minutes: 29
seconds: 43

Code Example 2

import datetime

dt = datetime.datetime.now()

day = dt.day
month = dt.month
year = dt.year
hour = dt.hour
minute = dt.minute
second = dt.second

print("Date: " + str(day) + "/" + str(month) + "/" + str(year))
print("Time: " + str(hour) + ":" + str(minute) + ":" + str(second))

Code Explanation

Retrieving the Current Datetime

• dt: This variable is assigned the current date and time captured by invoking datetime.datetime.now(). This function returns the current local date and time with full precision including year, month, day, and time down to the second.

Extracting Date and Time Components

• day, month, year: These variables extract the day, month, and year from the dt object. Each of these attributes returns an integer representing their respective parts of the date.
• hour, minute, second: Similarly, these variables store the hour, minute, and second components of the time from the dt object. Each attribute extracts the corresponding part of the time as integers.

Printing the Extracted Date and Time

• Print Formatted Date: Outputs the date in a simple day/month/year format by concatenating the string “Date: ” with the string representations of day, month, and year. This format is straightforward and widely used in many contexts for clear date representation.
• Print Formatted Time: Displays the time in a commonly used hour:minute:second format. This is achieved by concatenating “Time: ” with the string representations of hour, minute, and second.

Output

Date: 11/12/2022
Time: 9:31:2