Get current date and time in Python

There are serval ways we can use to get the current date. We will use the date class of the datetime module to perform this task.

Example: Python get today's date

In the following example, we will get today's date.

from datetime import date

today = date.today()
print("Today's date:", today)

Output

Today's date: 2017-10-30

In the above code, we imported the date class from the datetime module. After, we used the date.today() method to get the current local date.

The date.today() method returns a date object which is assigned to the today variable. After getting the date object, we can use the strftime() method to create a string representing date in diffrent formats.

Example: Current date in a different format

In the following example, we will display today's date in a different format.

from datetime import date

today = date.today()

# mm/dd/YY
x1 = today.strftime("%m/%d/%Y")
print("date 1 =", x1)

# mm/dd/y
x2 = today.strftime("%m/%d/%y")
print("date 2 =", x2)

# Textual month, day and year
x3 = today.strftime("%B %d, %Y")
print("date 3 =", x3)

# Month abbreviation, day and year
x4 = today.strftime("%b-%d-%Y")
print("date 4 =", x4)

After executing the above program, the output will be as follows:

date 1 = 10/30/2017
date 2 = 10/30/17
date 3 = October 30, 2017
date 4 = Oct-30-2017

Example: Get the current date and time

To get the current date and time, we can use the datetime class of the datetime module.

from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now()

print("now =", now)

# mm/dd/YY H:M:S
dt_str = now.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S")
print("date and time =", dt_str)

The output of the above code:

now = 2021-10-30 21:20:13.737047 
date and time = 10/30/2021 21:20:13

Above, we have used datetime.now() to get the current date and time. And after we used strftime() to create a string representing date and time in another format.