It's in fact almost the same in Python.. :-)
import datetime
year = datetime.date.today().year
Of course, date doesn't have a time associated, so if you care about that too, you can do the same with a complete datetime object:
import datetime
year = datetime.datetime.today().year
(Obviously no different, but you can store datetime.datetime.today() in a variable before you grab the year, of course).
One key thing to note is that the time components can differ between 32-bit and 64-bit pythons in some python versions (2.5.x tree I think). So you will find things like hour/min/sec on some 64-bit platforms, while you get hour/minute/second on 32-bit.
The other answers to this question seem to hit it spot on. Now how would you figure this out for yourself without stack overflow? Check out IPython, an interactive Python shell that has tab auto-complete.
> ipython
import Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Nov 6 2007, 16:54:01)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
IPython 0.8.2.svn.r2750 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
? -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help -> Python's own help system.
object? -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.
In [1]: import datetime
In [2]: now=datetime.datetime.now()
In [3]: now.
press tab a few times and you'll be prompted with the members of the "now" object:
now.__add__ now.__gt__ now.__radd__ now.__sub__ now.fromordinal now.microsecond now.second now.toordinal now.weekday
now.__class__ now.__hash__ now.__reduce__ now.astimezone now.fromtimestamp now.min now.strftime now.tzinfo now.year
now.__delattr__ now.__init__ now.__reduce_ex__ now.combine now.hour now.minute now.strptime now.tzname
now.__doc__ now.__le__ now.__repr__ now.ctime now.isocalendar now.month now.time now.utcfromtimestamp
now.__eq__ now.__lt__ now.__rsub__ now.date now.isoformat now.now now.timetuple now.utcnow
now.__ge__ now.__ne__ now.__setattr__ now.day now.isoweekday now.replace now.timetz now.utcoffset
now.__getattribute__ now.__new__ now.__str__ now.dst now.max now.resolution now.today now.utctimetuple
and you'll see that now.year is a member of the "now" object.
import datetime
a = datetime.datetime.today().year
or even (as Lennart suggested)
a = datetime.datetime.now().year
or even
a = datetime.date.today().year
If you want the year from a (unknown) datetime-object:
tijd = datetime.datetime(9999, 12, 31, 23, 59, 59)
>>> tijd.timetuple()
time.struct_time(tm_year=9999, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=23, tm_min=59, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=365, tm_isdst=-1)
>>> tijd.timetuple().tm_year
9999
Source: Stackoverflow.com