Utilizing Dates and Times in Python

Using the SQLite applications you have already developed, you pull all the datetimes and book titles from the database. SQLite has no datetime date type, and so we are storing them as strings. These strings need to be turned into actual datetime objects.

Update the code so that the datetime string is converted to a datetime object, and add the last minute of the day to it:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# due date data from db
title_due_dates = [
    ["Oh Python! My Python!", "2020-11-15"],
    ["Fun with Django", "2020-06-23"],
    ["When Bees Attack! The Horror!", "2020-12-10"],
    ["Martin Buber's Philosophies", "2020-07-12"],
    ["The Sun Also Orbits", "2020-10-31"]
]

# replace the string date with a date object for each title
# add the last minute of day to each due date
# add a timedelta representing the last minute of the day
for book in title_due_dates:
    due_date = datetime.strptime(book[1], "%Y-%m-%d")
    due_date = due_date + timedelta(hours=23, minutes=59)
    book[1] = due_date

Congratulations! You have shown that you can convert strings to datetime objects.

Before we can use our SQLite applications to upload the new due dates, we need to convert them to string representation.

Run python add_time.py. This will result in an AssertionError.

Now update add_time.py so that the datetime object is converted back to a string:

# previous code omitted

# replace the datetime object with a string representation
# remember SQLite stores dates as strings
for book in title_due_dates:
    book[1] = book[1].strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

Run python add_time.py.

Congratulations! You have shown that you can convert datetime objects to strings.