Python compute timeframe length between two dates

Question

I'm looking for the module ChronoUnit

java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit

implementation in Python, found in Java 8.

The reason this modules is useful, is because it contains a procedure that computes the Days, Months, Years etc.. between to arbitrary dates.

PS: Implementing the date computation in python, can result in a lot of problems as there are a lot of corner cases that I simply have no time consider at the moment, so please be constructive while answering.

Edit: I think my question is not clear enough, but what I'm trying to accomplish is to be able to actually substract one date from another and as a result to get the months, days, years etc.. between the two.

As per juanpa.arrivillaga comment the arrow library provides a useful method that provides a near similar function, I think that I'll answer my own question now.

What exactly went wrong when googling for the python [time](https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html)/[datetime](https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html) api and tutorials like [this](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/python_date_time.htm) or [this](https://realpython.com/python-time-module/)? — akuzminykh, Feb 22 '20 at 22:51
The problem is that most of the advertised methods work only in the inverse way, I'll edit the question to make that clear. — Cristofor, Feb 22 '20 at 22:53
The python standard library `datetime` package contains the classes `date`, `time`, `datetime`, and `timedelta` which are probably where you want to start looking. There is also a popular third-party library [`arrow`](https://arrow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) that many find easier to work with, and it is compatible with the standard lib. — juanpa.arrivillaga, Feb 22 '20 at 22:54

Cristofor · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-22T23:57:15.300

Thanks to @junpa.arrivillaga I figured out that the procedure might be easily implemented in python thanks to the arrow library.

The api to be used it the following:

arrow.Arrow.range('hour', start, end)

The final method in Python would be:

'''
    Computes day, month, year s 
    between two dates.
    frame - time frame 
    start - date start 
    end - date finish
    This method only works if the generated timeframe between to dates 
    is finite, as Arrow.range returns a generator!
'''
def count_frame_between_dates(frame, start, end):
    return len(list(arrow.Arrow.range(frame, start, end)))

Edit: Arrow.range returns a generator, in theory you can't compute the length of a generator, but if you are sure the generator you're using is returning a finite set of elements then you can convert this generato into a list then use len() to compute it's length.

Thanks to everyone.

Python compute timeframe length between two dates

1 Answers1