Generate a random list of n dates in the iso 8601 format within a range in Python

Question

I want to generate a random list of dates in the iso8601 format within the range from 2019-01-01 to 2019-12-31 n times.

from datetime import date
start_date = date(2019,1,1)
end_date = date(2019,12,31)

Other threads I've looked at simply give the list of all dates within that range, but that's not what I need. I also need the dates to be in the iso8601 format. What is the best way to achieve this?

Try this library it fake random dates with iso8601 format https://stackoverflow.com/a/25246600/14890747 — Saleem Shaik, Jan 15 '21 at 11:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 15 '21 at 11:39

1

You can use random.sample to sample without replacement or random.choices to sample with replacement after generating a list of all the dates in the range.

If you don't want to store the list you could also generate N random numbers from 1 through 365, then convert those to the appropriate dates.

import random

from datetime import date, timedelta

end_date = date(2019, 12, 31)
current_date = date(2019, 1, 1)
n = 3

step = timedelta(days=1)

dates = [current_date]
while current_date != end_date:
    current_date += step
    dates.append(current_date)

random_dates = random.choices(dates, k=n)
print([d.isoformat() for d in random_dates])

answered Jan 15 '21 at 11:39

Alex

947
6
16

Unfortunately the dates in the output are NOT in the iso format and they are strings – Vadim Katsemba Jan 15 '21 at 11:59
It seems to be in the ISO format to me. YYYY-MM-DD. Do you want to add times? What type would you expect the output to be if not strings? – Alex Jan 15 '21 at 12:12
It should look like this "2019-01-01T17:47:08+00:00" – Vadim Katsemba Jan 15 '21 at 12:19
Do you want the time to be randomized as well? – Alex Jan 15 '21 at 12:20
Yes, randomize the times as well – Vadim Katsemba Jan 15 '21 at 12:28
you need to resample using 3xx milliseconds in the iso format then random.choice – Golden Lion Apr 20 '21 at 16:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '21 at 11:38

You can do something like this

import datetime
import random

# startdate
start_date = datetime.date(2019, 1, 1)

# enddate
end_date = datetime.date(2019, 12, 31)

time_between_dates = end_date - start_date
days_between_dates = time_between_dates.days
#workload in days

random.seed(a=None)

random_number_of_days = random.randrange(days_between_dates)
random_date = start_date + datetime.timedelta(days=random_number_of_days)
print(str(random_date))

Which gave the following result when I ran it

2019-06-07

A similar question has been asked here Python - Generate random dates to create Gantt sequenced tasks?

Most of the code is from there except the last loop

I need a list of dates, not just one date – Vadim Katsemba Jan 15 '21 at 11:53 — Vadim Katsemba, Jan 15 '21 at 11:53

Golden Lion · Answer 3 · 2021-04-20T20:02:33.277

I create a dataframe with an datetimeindex with two iso8601 date values. I then resample the dataframe index to every 30Minute intervals then randomly choose 3 items from the dataframe.

df=pd.DataFrame({'timestamp':['2019-01-01T00:00:00.000Z','2019-12-31T23:59:59.300Z']})
df['timestamp']=df['timestamp'].apply(lambda timestamp: datetime.strptime(timestamp, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z'))
print(df['timestamp'])
df=df.set_index('timestamp')
dates = df.resample('30Min').max().dropna()
#print(dates)
random_dates = random.choices(dates.index, k=3)
print(random_dates)

output:

[Timestamp('2019-08-29 16:30:00+0000', tz='UTC', freq='30T'), Timestamp('2019-11-09 03:30:00+0000', tz='UTC', freq='30T'), Timestamp('2019-08-02 12:00:00+0000', tz='UTC', freq='30T')]

Generate a random list of n dates in the iso 8601 format within a range in Python

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