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
from datetime import date
today = date.today()
print("Today's date:", today)
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
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:
d1 = 16/09/2019 d2 = September 16, 2019 d3 = 09/16/19 d4 = Sep-16-2019
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
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)
You will gate output like below.
now = 2021-06-25 07:58:56.550604 date and time = 25/06/2021 07:58:56
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.
