Iterating through a range of dates in Python

Question

I have the following code to do this, but how can I do it better? Right now I think it\'s better than nested loops, but it starts to get Perl-one-linerish when you have a ge

Answer 1

This function has some extra features:

• can pass a string matching the DATE_FORMAT for start or end and it is converted to a date object
• can pass a date object for start or end

• error checking in case the end is older than the start

  import datetime
  from datetime import timedelta
  
  
  DATE_FORMAT = '%Y/%m/%d'
  
  def daterange(start, end):
        def convert(date):
              try:
                    date = datetime.datetime.strptime(date, DATE_FORMAT)
                    return date.date()
              except TypeError:
                    return date
  
        def get_date(n):
              return datetime.datetime.strftime(convert(start) + timedelta(days=n), DATE_FORMAT)
  
        days = (convert(end) - convert(start)).days
        if days <= 0:
              raise ValueError('The start date must be before the end date.')
        for n in range(0, days):
              yield get_date(n)
  
  
  start = '2014/12/1'
  end = '2014/12/31'
  print list(daterange(start, end))
  
  start_ = datetime.date.today()
  end = '2015/12/1'
  print list(daterange(start, end))