How to subtract today's date with an input date?

Question

My current code:

import datetime
from time import strptime
leapyear = 0

isValid = False
while not isValid:
     in_date = input(" Please in put a year in the format dd/mm/yyyy ")
     try:
         d = strptime(in_date, '%d/%m/%Y')
         isValid=True
     except:
         print ("This is not in the right format")

diff = d -datetime.date.today()
print(in_date)
print(d)
print(diff)

I cannot subtract the two dates, the input date and today's date from each other. It throws a TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'time.struct_time' and 'datetime.date' exception.

Any ideas why?

Martijn Pieters · Answer 1 · 2014-11-11T14:50:14.953

0

The datetime module objects only support subtraction with other objects from the same library. The time module struct_time tuple is not one of those.

Use the datetime.datetime.strptime() class method to parse the date instead:

 d = datetime.datetime.strptime(in_date, '%d/%m/%Y')

then use the datetime.date() method to extract just a date object from the result:

diff = d.date() - datetime.date.today()

The result is a datetime.timedelta instance.

Don't catch all exceptions; catch just those thrown by strptime() when passed a string that doesn't match the expected format, ValueError:

while True:
     in_date = input(" Please in put a year in the format dd/mm/yyyy ")
     try:
         d = datetime.datetime.strptime(in_date, '%d/%m/%Y').date()
         break
     except ValueError:
         print ("This is not in the right format")

I used break here to end the while loop rather than use a flag variable.

edited Nov 11 '14 at 14:50

answered Nov 11 '14 at 14:43

Martijn Pieters

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After getting the days how i can i get the return into a dd/mm/yyy format ? – user3077551 Nov 11 '14 at 14:59
@user3077551: define 'months' in terms of a difference here. – Martijn Pieters Nov 11 '14 at 15:00
@user3077551: see [calculate the difference between two datetime.date() dates in years and months](http://stackoverflow.com/q/12564077) – Martijn Pieters Nov 11 '14 at 15:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 19 '19 at 19:08

import datetime
from datetime import strptime
currentdate=datetime.date.today()
date_str = input("enter date in format dd/mm/yyy") #inputed date is in string need to conver ot into date 
#format_str = '%d/%m/%Y' # The format
datetime_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_str, '%d/%m/%Y') # convert inputed date into date 
diff= datetime_obj.date() - currentdate # take .date because we only need date not time 

print("Current date ==",currentdate)
print("entered date ==",datetime_obj.date()) 
print("remaining Days left  ===",diff)

How to subtract today's date with an input date?

2 Answers2