How to get current date and time in Python?

Learn to get today’s date and current date and time in Python. We will also format the date and time in different formats using strftime() method.

There are a number of ways you can take to get the current date. We will use the date class of the datetime module to accomplish this task.

Example 1: Python get today’s date

# Example 1: Python get today's date
from datetime import date

today = date.today()
print("Today's date:", today)

# When you run the program, the output will be something like below:

Today's date: 2021-06-22

Note: Here, we imported the date class from the datetime module. Then, we used the date.today() method to get the current local date.

By the way, date.today() returns a date object, which is assigned to the today variable in the above program. Now, you can use the strftime() method to create a string representing date in different formats.

Example 2: Current date in different formats

# Example 2: Current date in different formats

from datetime import date

today = date.today()

# dd/mm/YY
d1 = today.strftime("%d/%m/%Y")
print("d1 =", d1)

# Textual month, day and year	
d2 = today.strftime("%B %d, %Y")
print("d2 =", d2)

# mm/dd/y
d3 = today.strftime("%m/%d/%y")
print("d3 =", d3)

# Month abbreviation, day and year	
d4 = today.strftime("%b-%d-%Y")
print("d4 =", d4)

# When you run the program, the output will be something like below:

d1 = 22/06/2021
d2 = June 22, 2021
d3 = 06/22/21
d4 = Jun-22-2021

If you need to get the current date and time, you can use datetime class of the datetime module.

Example 3: Get the current date and time

# Example 3: Get the current date and time

from datetime import datetime

# datetime object containing current date and time
now = datetime.now()
 
print("now =", now)

# dd/mm/YY H:M:S
dt_string = now.strftime("%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")
print("date and time =", dt_string)	

now = 2021-06-22 18:35:14.331191
date and time = 22/06/2021 18:35:14

Explanation:

Here, we have used datetime.now() to get the current date and time. Then, we used strftime() to create a string representing date and time in another format.