Expand date to the beginning and end datetime for the day

Question

Based on the current time (datetime.now()) I want to expand this to cover the whole days time.

Right now I have been using:

start = (datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
end = datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

Problem is that this is 24 hours from the current date. If it is 12pm noon that means it should only look back 12 hours as I want to search for the current days records.

How can I accomplish this in Python?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5476065/truncate-python-datetime — NightShadeQueen, Jul 17 '15 at 16:34
@NightShadeQueen so essentially set the start time to the truncated version of datetime and then use the current time for the end range. That should work. — ComputerLocus, Jul 17 '15 at 16:38
related: [Python: Given the current time in UTC, how do you determine the start and end time of the day in a particular timezone?](http://stackoverflow.com/a/25605133/4279) — jfs, Jul 18 '15 at 19:57

fivetentaylor · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-19T22:05:36.860

9

I hope this makes sense, I just gave very descriptive variable names

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

now = datetime.now()
start_of_day = datetime(now.year,now.month,now.day)
delta_since_start_of_day = now - start_of_day
delta_till_end_of_day = timedelta(days=1) - delta_since_start_of_day
end_of_day = start_of_day + timedelta(days=1)

edited Jul 19 '15 at 22:05

answered Jul 17 '15 at 16:43

fivetentaylor

1,277
7
11

Thanks for the suggestion @J.F.Sebastian, I edited accordingly – fivetentaylor Jul 19 '15 at 22:06
I for more accuracy and consistency: end_of_day = start_of_day + timedelta(days=1, seconds=-1) – Juls May 02 '22 at 17:53

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 12 '20 at 06:53

9

Here's another solution that directly resets the time - no math required. Uses datetime.replace():

now = datetime.now()
day_start = now.replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0)
day_end = day_start + timedelta(hours=24)

answered Apr 12 '20 at 06:53

Halogen

551
6
11

2

One advantage of using `datetime.replace()` like this is that it preserves the timezone info. – Christian Long Oct 25 '21 at 18:02

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 05 '21 at 09:53

5

It seems you could accomplish what you wish like so:

from datetime import datetime, time

now = datetime.now()
start = datetime.combine(now, time.min)  # datetime.datetime(2021, 11, 5, 0, 0)
end = datetime.combine(now, time.max)  # datetime.datetime(2021, 11, 5, 23, 59, 59, 999999)

No need for maths, replacing, timedeltas.

answered Nov 05 '21 at 09:53

cegas

2,823
3
16
16

This should be the accepted answer. It is so much cleaner to read and easier to understand what the code is doing and why. – DukeSilver Aug 28 '23 at 17:39

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 08 '20 at 05:53

-1

I just use datetime.time.max in this way:

now = datetime.now()
day_end = datetime.datetime.combine(now, datetime.time.max)

answered Jun 08 '20 at 05:53

sabrina

1,567
2
12
15

Expand date to the beginning and end datetime for the day

4 Answers4