The dateutil module provides powerful extensions to the standard datetime module, available in Python.
dateutil can be installed from PyPI using pip (note that the package name is different from the importable name):
pip install python-dateutil
dateutil is available on PyPI https://pypi.org/project/python-dateutil/
The documentation is hosted at: https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
The code and issue tracker are hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/dateutil/dateutil/
- Computing of relative deltas (next month, next year, next Monday, last week of month, etc);
- Computing of relative deltas between two given date and/or datetime objects;
- Computing of dates based on very flexible recurrence rules, using a superset of the iCalendar specification. Parsing of RFC strings is supported as well.
- Generic parsing of dates in almost any string format;
- Timezone (tzinfo) implementations for tzfile(5) format files (/etc/localtime, /usr/share/zoneinfo, etc), TZ environment string (in all known formats), iCalendar format files, given ranges (with help from relative deltas), local machine timezone, fixed offset timezone, UTC timezone, and Windows registry-based time zones.
- Internal up-to-date world timezone information based on Olson's database.
- Computing of Easter Sunday dates for any given year, using Western, Orthodox or Julian algorithms;
- A comprehensive test suite.
Here's a snapshot, just to give an idea about the power of the package. For more examples, look at the documentation.
Suppose you want to know how much time is left, in years/months/days/etc, before the next easter happening on a year with a Friday 13th in August, and you want to get today's date out of the "date" unix system command. Here is the code:
>>> from dateutil.relativedelta import *
>>> from dateutil.easter import *
>>> from dateutil.rrule import *
>>> from dateutil.parser import *
>>> from datetime import *
>>> now = parse("Sat Oct 11 17:13:46 UTC 2003")
>>> today = now.date()
>>> year = rrule(YEARLY,dtstart=now,bymonth=8,bymonthday=13,byweekday=FR)[0].year
>>> rdelta = relativedelta(easter(year), today)
>>> print("Today is: %s" % today)
Today is: 2003-10-11
>>> print("Year with next Aug 13th on a Friday is: %s" % year)
Year with next Aug 13th on a Friday is: 2004
>>> print("How far is the Easter of that year: %s" % rdelta)
How far is the Easter of that year: relativedelta(months=+6)
>>> print("And the Easter of that year is: %s" % (today+rdelta))
And the Easter of that year is: 2004-04-11Being exactly 6 months ahead was really a coincidence :)
We welcome many types of contributions - bug reports, pull requests (code, infrastructure or documentation fixes). For more information about how to contribute to the project, see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the repository.
The dateutil module was written by Gustavo Niemeyer <gustavo@niemeyer.net> in 2003.
It is maintained by:
- Gustavo Niemeyer <gustavo@niemeyer.net> 2003-2011
- Tomi Pieviläinen <tomi.pievilainen@iki.fi> 2012-2014
- Yaron de Leeuw <me@jarondl.net> 2014-2016
- Paul Ganssle <paul@ganssle.io> 2015-
Starting with version 2.4.1, all source and binary distributions will be signed by a PGP key that has, at the very least, been signed by the key which made the previous release. A table of release signing keys can be found below:
| Releases | Signing key fingerprint |
|---|---|
| 2.4.1- | 6B49 ACBA DCF6 BD1C A206 67AB CD54 FCE3 D964 BEFB |
Our mailing list is available at dateutil@python.org. As it is hosted by the PSF, it is subject to the PSF code of conduct.
All contributions after December 1, 2017 released under dual license - either Apache 2.0 License or the BSD 3-Clause License. Contributions before December 1, 2017 - except those those explicitly relicensed - are released only under the BSD 3-Clause License.