How can I compare a date and a datetime in Python

Question

Here s a little snippet that I m trying execute    gt  gt  gt  from datetime import    gt  gt  gt  item date   datetime strptime  7 16 10     m  d  y    gt  gt  gt  from date   date today  -timedelta days 3   gt  gt  gt  print type item date   lt type  datetime datetime  gt   gt  gt  gt  print type from date   lt type  datetime date  gt   gt  gt  gt  if item date  gt  from date          print  item is newer      Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  TypeError  can t compare datetime datetime to datetime date   I can t seem to compare the date and the datetime values  What would be the best way to compare these  Should I convert the datetime to date or vice-versa  How do i convert between them    A small question but it seems to be a little confusing

User · Answer

Here is another take   stolen  from a comment at can  39 t compare datetime datetime to datetime date     convert the date to a datetime using this construct   datetime datetime d year  d month  d day    Suggestion   from datetime import datetime  def ensure datetime d               Takes a date or a datetime as input  outputs a datetime             if isinstance d  datetime           return d     return datetime datetime d year  d month  d day   def datetime cmp d1  d2               Compares two timestamps   Tolerates dates              return cmp ensure datetime d1   ensure datetime d2

User · Answer

In my case  I get two objects in and I don t know if it s date or timedate objects   Converting to date won t be good as I d be dropping information - two timedate objects with the same date should be sorted correctly   I m OK with the dates being sorted before the datetime with same date   I think I will use strftime before comparing    gt  gt  gt  foo datetime date 2015 1 10   gt  gt  gt  bar datetime datetime 2015 2 11 15 00   gt  gt  gt  foo strftime   F H M S    gt  bar strftime   F H M S   False  gt  gt  gt  foo strftime   F H M S    lt  bar strftime   F H M S   True   Not elegant  but should work out   I think it would be better if Python wouldn t raise the error  I see no reasons why a datetime shouldn t be comparable with a date   This behaviour is consistent in python2 and python3

User · Answer

Use the  date   method to convert a datetime to a date   if item date date    gt  from date    Alternatively  you could use datetime today   instead of date today    You could use  from date   from date replace hour 0  minute 0  second 0  microsecond 0    to eliminate the time part afterwards

User · Answer

Create and similar object for comparison works too ex   from datetime import datetime  date  now   datetime now   today   date today      compare now with today two month earlier   date now year  now month - 2  now day  if two month earlier  gt  today      print True   two month earlier   datetime now year  now month - 2  now day  if two month earlier  gt  now     print  this will work with datetime too

User · Answer

I am trying to compare date which are in string format like  20110930   benchMark   datetime datetime strptime  20110701     Y m d     actualDate   datetime datetime strptime  20110930     Y m d    if actualDate date    lt  benchMark date        print True

[python] How can I compare a date and a datetime in Python?

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