00:00 Given datetime is part of the Python standard lib,

00:04 we don't actually have to do any setup here.

00:07 You'll see in the coming videos

00:09 that you will have to do setup steps,

00:12 create virtual environments and whatnot,

00:14 but given this is datetime, we don't really have to.

00:17 And, I think it'd be best for us to just work

00:20 in the Python shell here.

00:21 This is IDLE, the default Python IDE

00:25 that it ships with.

00:27 So, let's have a play with that.

00:29 Now, the first thing we're going to do

00:31 is we're going to import datetime.

00:34 But, we're actually going to do

00:37 from datetime import datetime, okay?

00:44 And, this is just going to make it a bit easier for us

00:46 when we're typing in the rest of our code.

00:48 And, just to get yourself prepared, let's just

00:52 from datetime import date

00:54 that's for a bit later in this video.

00:58 Alright so what is datetime, alright.

01:00 For those who are unaccustomed and unaware

01:03 datetime is just the Python library module that allows

01:07 you to deal with dates and times.

01:11 Pretty self-explanatory, right?

01:14 So, if you want to deal with just the dates

01:18 so, you know, today's date, let's call it

01:21 the 23rd of February 2018, not very specific.

01:26 Or if you want to deal with the time

01:29 that you've got to think about that

01:30 from a programming perspective, there is a difference, okay.

01:35 So, datetime allows us to deal with

01:38 the entire time set, the entire timeframe.

01:41 You're talking seconds, minutes, hours, days

01:44 all the way through to years, okay?

01:47 We can visualize that with datetime.today().

01:52 If we hit enter, there we go, we can see today's date.

01:57 The 24th of February 2018

02:01 but we also get this timestamp.

02:03 It's 10:17pm

02:05 and these are the extra seconds here.

02:08 So seconds, milliseconds and whatnot, okay?

02:12 Now I'm going to show you this, what kind of an object is this?

02:16 Well let's go, well first actually we have to assign that

02:20 to something that way so, we'll just go with today.

02:24 Here's datetime.today()

02:28 alright and then we'll type it out, so type today.

02:32 So it's a datetime object, okay?

02:35 And that's important because you can't mix these objects.

02:39 I'll point that out in just a minute.

02:42 So with this timestamp, there is more you can do with that.

02:46 And I'll show you that in the next video with timedelta.

02:51 Alright, but for now just understand that this is what your

02:53 standard datetime format will look like.

02:56 This is the sort of data you're going to get back.

02:59 And this is really useful for times when you want to

03:03 deal with say, subscriptions or anything like that

03:06 where it has to do with exact timestamps, or logging

03:10 or anything where you need to know

03:13 the time that something happened.

03:15 Going by the date of say, the 24th of February

03:19 is not accurate enough, okay, there is 24 hours

03:22 within that day so, a lot of things could have happened.

03:25 Alright, so we'll move on to the date part here.

03:30 So we'll just go today date, we'll create that variable.

03:34 Here's date.today(), so you can see straightaway

03:38 we're not using datetime, we're using the date section

03:43 okay, we're using the date option here.

03:45 So date.today()

03:48 and if we type that out

03:53 Today date, we can see

03:56 the different type of object here.

03:58 First one was a datetime and now it's a date object, okay?

04:04 And we can see what that looks like with today date.

04:09 And we have just the date string, okay?

04:12 So we don't have the extra time on the end.

04:15 And this is, again, very useful.

04:18 So you can see the distinction between the two of them.

04:21 Alright let's get ourselves a little bit of white space.

04:25 Now one really cool thing that I love about date

04:30 is that we can drill into it a little more, so we can go

04:36 today.month is 2.

04:41 So you can see we can actually tear it apart a bit.

04:44 So today.day

04:47 is 24 and then

04:51 today.year, and we get 2018.

04:57 So now you can sort of visualize how date can help you

04:59 in your projects, right, if you're not already using it.

05:03 It's actually really cool.

05:04 So one really, really cool thing that

05:07 has come in handy over time,

05:10 is the fact that you can do

05:11 a bit of math with your dates, alright.

05:15 So we'll go, let's just go something easy.

05:18 So Christmas, what's the date for Christmas?

05:21 It's the, we'll go year first, so 2018.

05:25 It's the month next, so 12.

05:29 And then it's the day, so 25th, alright.

05:35 Now one thing, if you had a look, this is ...

05:40 us specifying a date, this is us

05:42 assigning a date to a variable.

05:45 So now the Christmas variable is always going to

05:50 have this date assigned to it.

05:54 You can see that there, okay.

05:57 Now, this is really cool, so

06:00 We can actually go Christmas, cause we know that's

06:04 the end of this year, minus, today date.

06:10 Kay, and that's 304 days, it automatically called

06:15 on timedelta, so that's giving away something for the next

06:18 video but, carry on, 304 days.

06:22 Alright, and we can see that visualized a different way.

06:25 We can, and this is again giving more away

06:27 we can go Christmas

06:31 minus today

06:35 in days, so .days.

06:39 304 days, alright and this is really cool for something

06:43 such as this, I'm just going to copy and paste here

06:46 rather than type it all out for you, alright.

06:50 So if Christmas is not today date

06:55 well what can we do?

06:56 We can print a certain message.

06:58 Again, you can see this is useful for certain other projects

07:03 so print, sorry there are still this many days

07:09 (christmas minus today).days, until Christmas.

07:13 Okay, and then else ...

07:16 We'll copy and paste this as well.

07:20 We're going to print some sort of message, alright.

07:25 "Yay, it's Christmas."

07:27 So, by hitting enter, sorry there are still 304

07:32 the same value here, until Christmas.

07:35 I've obviously left out the word 'days'

07:37 so that's my mistake, but

07:38 sorry there are still 304 days until Christmas.

07:42 If I happen to wait another, you know, ha ha ha ha

07:46 that many days, 304 days

07:48 we would then get this message here.

07:51 So this is date and this is datetime.

07:54 Very, very tedious at times, I want to say

07:59 but so useful, so this is a great place to start

08:02 manipulating your code, manipulate your dates

08:06 and have some fun with it.

08:08 And in the next video we're going to look at datetime.