How to compare two dates?

Question

How would I compare two dates to see which is later, using Python?

For example, I want to check if the current date is past the last date in this list I am creating, of holiday dates, so that it will send an email automatically, telling the admin to update the holiday.txt file

Answer 1

There are many ways by which you can compare two dates some of the important methods are as follows:-

The first thing you can use the datetime module and the operator <. Below is an example that shows how we use the datetime module.

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

past = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1)

present = datetime.now()

print(past < present) 

print(datetime(2000, 5, 5) < present) 

present - datetime(1000, 4, 4)

Another thing we can use is the time module:-

Let’s assume two dates first:

date1 = "31/12/2015"

date2 = "01/01/2016"

You can do the following:

newdate1 = time.strptime(date1, "%d/%m/%Y")

newdate2 = time.strptime(date2, "%d/%m/%Y")

Now for converting them into python's date format. You need to do the comparison:

newdate1 > newdate2 

newdate1 < newdate2 

The full code of the above explanation:-

import time

date1 = "31/12/2015"

date2 = "01/01/2016"

newdate1 = time.strptime(date1, "%d/%m/%Y")

newdate2 = time.strptime(date2, "%d/%m/%Y")

print(newdate1 > newdate2) 

print(newdate1 < newdate2)