How do I print out a time delta the following way? Counter down in Python

Question

I am doing a counter down to user input date. I am stuck, don't know how to print hours, mins, secs. For example user input is: 2019-03-10, so the script need to count down: 6 days 23h 59mins 20secs left, 23h 59mins 19secs left etc. Any suggestions how to do it?

My code:

import datetime
import time

current_date = datetime.date.today()
print('Today is: ' + str(current_date))


def getdate():
    year = int(input('Enter a year: '))
    month = int(input('Enter a month: '))
    day = int(input('Enter a day: '))
    date_user = datetime.date(year, month, day)
    print(date_user)

    if date_user < current_date:
        print('This is past bro, wake up!')
        exit()
    elif date_user > current_date:
        print((date_user - current_date))


getdate()

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '19 at 18:25

This is an example.

Notes:

It uses datetime.datetime.now() to get time including hours, minutes and seconds
It uses datetime.datetime(...) instead of datetime.date(...), because the latter is not compareable with datetime.datetime.now() (datetime and date are not compareable, because the latter lacks specific timing information
It uses https://stackoverflow.com/a/539360/8575607 to get minutes and hours from timedelta
It uses print(..., end="\r") to not always create a new line, and print("\n...") to force a new line

import datetime
import time

current_date = datetime.datetime.now() # Now gives current minutes, seconds...
print('Today is: ' + str(current_date))


def getdate():
    year = int(input('Enter a year: '))
    month = int(input('Enter a month: '))
    day = int(input('Enter a day: '))
    date_user = datetime.datetime(year, month, day, 0, 0, 0) # Midnight
    return date_user

date_user = getdate()

while date_user > current_date:
    current_date = datetime.datetime.now()
    diff = date_user - current_date
    # Using https://stackoverflow.com/a/539360/8575607
    s = diff.seconds
    # hours
    hours = s // 3600 
    # remaining seconds
    s = s - (hours * 3600)
    # minutes
    minutes = s // 60
    # remaining seconds
    seconds = s - (minutes * 60)
    print("{}day(s) {}h {}min(s) {}sec(s) left".format(diff.days, hours, minutes, seconds), end='\r')
    time.sleep(1)

print('\nThis is past bro, wake up!')

I would suggest you to better specify your question the next time. Examples would be "How do I print out a time delta the following way?" or "How do I execute a line of code every second until a goal is reached?" You went for asking about the bigger picture, which often does not give you that useful answers ^^

Thanks! You opened my mind, could not to solve this problem. Ok, next time I will give more details about my problem, but hopefully you were able to understand me. — Ninsu, Mar 04 '19 at 18:38
@Ninsu Great! Might you then mark this answer as correct or specify your question? — 2xB, Mar 04 '19 at 18:42
@Ninsu Thank you. As this probably is not the place for a talk, I would now go my way. Good luck with your project! — 2xB, Mar 04 '19 at 18:56

How do I print out a time delta the following way? Counter down in Python

1 Answers1