How to Compare Times in Python Using the Time Library - Step by Step Guide

[dacruick]

Currently I have a program in which I want to compare times. I have

dt = datetime.now()

x = dt.time()

which gives me the current time in Hours:Minutes:Seconds:MicroSeconds.

I also have variables HourStart, MinuteStart, HourEnd,MinuteEnd. Which are the hours and minutes that are the bounds of my program running.

I want to compare times. So I want to convert HourStart MinuteStart etc to time types. So if HourStart = 10 and MinuteStart = 30. I want to represent that as a time type being 10:30:00:000000

any help is appreciated

 

[story645]

The python datetime docs is full of info and examples. Generally, the docs are the best place to start looking for info on how to do anything.

 

[shoehorn]

Currently I have a program in which I want to compare times. I have

dt = datetime.now()

x = dt.time()

which gives me the current time in Hours:Minutes:Seconds:MicroSeconds.

I also have variables HourStart, MinuteStart, HourEnd,MinuteEnd. Which are the hours and minutes that are the bounds of my program running.

I want to compare times. So I want to convert HourStart MinuteStart etc to time types. So if HourStart = 10 and MinuteStart = 30. I want to represent that as a time type being 10:30:00:000000

any help is appreciated

Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, this appears to be very straightforward. Suppose that we have ints start_hour, start_min, end_hour, and end_min. You can construct time objects from these by calling the datetime.time constructor:

start_time = datetime.time(start_hour, start_min)
end_time  = datetime.time(end_hour, end_min)

You can then compare these to the time portion of a datetime.date object. For instance, if you define dt = datetime.now(), you can determine whether the end time is before now by

end_time < dt.time()

 

[dacruick]

You've most likely got it right. I tried that already but I think I was having a lot of trouble with my libraries and how I'm calling my objects. I'll give it a shot

 

[dacruick]

Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, this appears to be very straightforward. Suppose that we have ints start_hour, start_min, end_hour, and end_min. You can construct time objects from these by calling the datetime.time constructor:

At the top of my program I've got the following libraries

from datetime import *
from time import *

and I did a little program just to test out your suggestion and received the following error:

TypeError: descriptor 'time' requires a 'datetime.datetime' object but received a 'int'

 

[shoehorn]

At the top of my program I've got the following libraries

from datetime import *
from time import *

and I did a little program just to test out your suggestion and received the following error:

TypeError: descriptor 'time' requires a 'datetime.datetime' object but received a 'int'

This could be one of several things. Could you post your code here so I can have a look?

 

[dacruick]

This could be one of several things. Could you post your code here so I can have a look?

As of right now I don't have much of a code, but my issue is outside of the rest of my code anyways. I have a function that returns two floats, starttime and endtime.

basically what I am doing is this:

from datetime import *

dt=datetime.now()

while starttime < float(dt.strftime('%H')) + float(dt.strftime('%M')/60) < endttime:

so what I want to do is convert all of those floats into a datetime, for a more seemless comparison. thanks

 

[dacruick]

I was able to use dt.time() to convert it to something like hours:minutes:seconds.microseconds, which works well for my purposes. But its quite annoying when i try to convert my floats into time format. thanks again.