Creating a range of dates in Python

Question

I want to create a list of dates, starting with today, and going back an arbitrary number of days, say, in my example 100 days. Is there a better way to do it than this?

Answer 1

Here is gist I created, from my own code, this might help. (I know the question is too old, but others can use it)

https://gist.github.com/2287345

(same thing below)

import datetime
from time import mktime

def convert_date_to_datetime(date_object):
    date_tuple = date_object.timetuple()
    date_timestamp = mktime(date_tuple)
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(date_timestamp)

def date_range(how_many=7):
    for x in range(0, how_many):
        some_date = datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=x)
        some_datetime = convert_date_to_datetime(some_date.date())
        yield some_datetime

def pick_two_dates(how_many=7):
    a = b = convert_date_to_datetime(datetime.datetime.now().date())
    for each_date in date_range(how_many):
        b = a
        a = each_date
        if a == b:
            continue
        yield b, a

Answer 2

Marginally better...

base = datetime.datetime.today()
date_list = [base - datetime.timedelta(days=x) for x in range(numdays)]

Answer 3

Based on answers I wrote for myself this:

import datetime;
print [(datetime.date.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=x)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d') for x in range(-5, 0)]

Output:

['2017-12-11', '2017-12-10', '2017-12-09', '2017-12-08', '2017-12-07']

The difference is that I get the 'date' object, not the 'datetime.datetime' one.

Answer 4

A bit of a late answer I know, but I just had the same problem and decided that Python's internal range function was a bit lacking in this respect so I've overridden it in a util module of mine.

from __builtin__ import range as _range
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

def range(*args):
    if len(args) != 3:
        return _range(*args)
    start, stop, step = args
    if start < stop:
        cmp = lambda a, b: a < b
        inc = lambda a: a + step
    else:
        cmp = lambda a, b: a > b
        inc = lambda a: a - step
    output = [start]
    while cmp(start, stop):
        start = inc(start)
        output.append(start)

    return output

print range(datetime(2011, 5, 1), datetime(2011, 10, 1), timedelta(days=30))

Answer 5

Matplotlib related

from matplotlib.dates import drange
import datetime

base = datetime.date.today()
end  = base + datetime.timedelta(days=100)
delta = datetime.timedelta(days=1)
l = drange(base, end, delta)

Answer 6

You can write a generator function that returns date objects starting from today:

import datetime

def date_generator():
  from_date = datetime.datetime.today()
  while True:
    yield from_date
    from_date = from_date - datetime.timedelta(days=1)

This generator returns dates starting from today and going backwards one day at a time. Here is how to take the first 3 dates:

>>> import itertools
>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator(), 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 12, 19, 12, 21, 703890)]

The advantage of this approach over a loop or list comprehension is that you can go back as many times as you want.

Edit

A more compact version using a generator expression instead of a function:

date_generator = (datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=i) for i in itertools.count())

Usage:

>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator, 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 15, 1, 32, 37, 286765), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 1, 32, 37, 286836), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 1, 32, 37, 286859)]