Python - How To Get the Current Time in Python

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We could use two modules to get the current time in Python, that are datetime and time.

datetime Module to Get the Current Time in Python

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.now() datetime.datetime(2018, 7, 17, 22, 48, 16, 222169) 

It returns the datetime object that includes the date time information including year, month, day and time.

If you prefer a string format, then you could use a strftime method to convert the datetime object instance to a string format as defined in the argument.

>>> datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') '2018-07-17 22:54:25' 

Below is the snippet of directives in the strftime format string.

Directive	Meaning
%d	Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
%H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].
%m	Month as a decimal number [01,12].
%M	Minute as a decimal number [00,59].
%S	Second as a decimal number [00,61].
%Y	Year with century as a decimal number.

Only Current Time Without Date

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.now().time() datetime.time(23, 4, 0, 13713) 

time Module to Get the Current Time in Python

time.strftime to Get the Current Time in Python

import time time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', time.localtime()) 

'2018-07-17 21:06:40' 

time.ctime to Get the Current Time in Python

import time time.ctime() 

'Tue Oct 29 11:21:51 2019' 

The result is that ctime is more display-friendly to display in the GUI or print in the console. It could aslo be splitted to get the weekday, month, day, time and year.

>>> import time >>> A = time.ctime() >>> A = A.split() >>> A ['Tue', 'Oct', '29', '12:38:44', '2019']