Subtracting two dates in python

Question

I would like to subtract two dates i.e I have entered a date into a textbox which is of type String like below

type(waitForObject(":VWAP Calculator_LCDateTextField"), "07/24/14")

I am capturing that date like below

Current = (waitForObject(":VWAP Calculator_LCDateTextField").text)

so, now I want to subtract the captured date with my current system date and get the difference in days. I tried many ways and see no success.

Someone please help?

Answer 1

Try the 'datetime' module:

 >>> from datetime import datetime
 >>> d = datetime.strptime("07/24/14", "%m/%d/%y")
 >>> d
datetime.datetime(2014, 7, 24, 0, 0)
 >>> diff = datetime.now() - d
 >>> diff.days
7

Answer 2

If you have the user-entered date in a string format, you can use datetime.strptime() to convert it into a datetime object, like so:

 from datetime import datetime
 user_date = datetime.strptime(user_input, "%m/%d/%y")

Get the current system date like this:

 now_date = datetime.now()

Subtract the two datetime objects to obtain a timedelta object:

 mydelta = now_date - user_date

Look at the days attribute to get the difference in days:

 mydelta.days