Date and time handling in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Date and time handling

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple program to work with dates and times. This program will help you understand how to get the current date and time, set a specific date, and calculate the difference between two dates.

🎯 Goal: Build a Python program that gets the current date and time, sets a birthday date, calculates the number of days until the birthday, and prints the results.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the datetime module

Create a variable for the current date and time

Create a variable for a specific birthday date

Calculate the difference in days between the birthday and today

Print the current date and time, the birthday, and the days until the birthday

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Working with dates and times is important for calendars, reminders, and scheduling apps.

💼 Career

Many jobs require handling dates and times for logging events, calculating durations, and managing deadlines.

1

Get the current date and time

Import the datetime module and create a variable called now that stores the current date and time using datetime.datetime.now().

Python

# Import datetime and get current date and time
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use import datetime to access date and time functions.

Use datetime.datetime.now() to get the current date and time.

2

Set a birthday date

Create a variable called birthday that stores the date of your birthday using datetime.datetime(year, month, day). Use the date 2024, 12, 25 for this example.

Python

import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
# Create birthday date for December 25, 2024
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use datetime.datetime(2024, 12, 25) to create the birthday date.

3

Calculate days until birthday

Create a variable called days_until_birthday that calculates the difference in days between birthday and now. Use subtraction and access the days attribute of the resulting timedelta.

Python

import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
birthday = datetime.datetime(2024, 12, 25)
# Calculate days until birthday
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Subtract now from birthday and get the days attribute.

4

Print the results

Print the current date and time stored in now, the birthday date stored in birthday, and the number of days until the birthday stored in days_until_birthday. Use three separate print() statements.

Python

import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
birthday = datetime.datetime(2024, 12, 25)
days_until_birthday = (birthday - now).days
# Print now, birthday, and days_until_birthday
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print() three times to show the values.