Basic datetime objects usage

The datetime module contains three primary types of objects - date, time, and datetime.

import datetime

# Date object
today = datetime.date.today()
new_year = datetime.date(2017, 01, 01) #datetime.date(2017, 1, 1)

# Time object
noon = datetime.time(12, 0, 0) #datetime.time(12, 0)

# Current datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()

# Datetime object
millenium_turn = datetime.datetime(2000, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0) #datetime.datetime(2000, 1, 1, 0, 0)

Arithmetic operations for these objects are only supported within same datatype and performing simple arithmetic with instances of different types will result in a TypeError.

# subtraction of noon from today
noon-today
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'datetime.time' and 'datetime.date'
However, it is straightforward to convert between types.

# Do this instead
print('Time since the millenium at midnight: ',
      datetime.datetime(today.year, today.month, today.day) - millenium_turn)

# Or this
print('Time since the millenium at noon: ',
      datetime.datetime.combine(today, noon) - millenium_turn)

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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