How to add Days to a Date in Python

In this article, we work with a Python in-built module, datetime which enable us to perform operations and manipulations on date and time values in python. We can pass duration or the difference we desired between two dates and receive the end date. This value can be passed in the form of days, weeks or months.

Also read: How to Work with Python TimeDelta?

Dates in python

By importing the built-in python package i.e. datetime we can work with Date function. Along with date objects we also have time objects to work with time, date and days. The datetime module depicts date in the form of year, month, day, hour, minutes and seconds. The datetime module has many methods to return information about the date which can be manipulated according to user eg we can use date () to return only date and the time.

Overview of libraries

We use datetime and timedelta module to add days to a given date.

datetime: Date and Time manipulation classes are available in datetime module, the datetime object returns date along with hour, minute and seconds.

timedelta: The difference between two dates or time is represented by timedelta object for example, in below implementation we pass days=5 value to timedelta to receive a difference of 5 days from the given or current date.

Examples of adding days to Dates

Let’s now take a look at the different examples for adding days to dates in Python

Example 1: Adding days to given date using datetime

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

#adding days to given date 

given_date_string = "2030-02-01"  #year-month-day format

#conversion from string to datetime object
given_date = datetime.strptime(given_date_string,"%Y-%m-%d")

#printing given date 
print("The Given date: ",given_date_string)

#calculating new date 
new_date = given_date + timedelta(days=6)

print("The New date: ",new_date)

In the above code, we:

1. imported the datetime and timedelta modules from the datetime package using the from datetime import datetime, timedelta statement.
2. assigned a string date "2030-02-01" to the given_date_string variable.
3. converted the string date to a datetime object using the datetime.strptime() function, which takes two arguments: the first is the string to be converted, and the second is the format of the string. The %Y-%m-%d format string specifies that the year, month, and day should be extracted from the string in that order.
4. printed the original date in string format using print("The Given date: ", given_date_string).
5. created a new datetime object by adding 6 days to the original date using the timedelta() function. This function takes a single argument, which specifies the number of days (or other units) to add or subtract from the original date. In this case, the days argument is set to 6.
6. printed the new date in string format using print("The New date: ", new_date).

If the date string is formatted in a different way you can look up to the format codes you need to pass as second argument.

Output:

The Given date:  2030-02-01
The New date:  2030-02-07 00:00:00

Example 2: Adding days to current date using timedelta

from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import date

#adding days to current date 
current_date = date.today()

#printing current date 
print('Current date: ',current_date)

#calculating new date 
new_date = current_date + timedelta(days=4)

#printing new date 
print('New date: ',new_date)

Output:

Current date:  2023-02-12
New date:  2023-02-16

Example 3: Using date class to add days to a date

from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import date
#using the date class to add days to a date 
date = date(2023,2,12)
print("Input date: ",date)

#passing the number of days and printing the output
result = date + timedelta(days=3)
print("Result date: ",result)

Output:

Input date:  2023-02-12
Result date:  2023-02-15

Example 4: Using the date() method to get the result date

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

#using the date() method to get the result date 
current_date = datetime.now()
print("Current date: ",current_date)

new_date = current_date + timedelta(days=5)
print(new_date) #will print 2023-02-17 23:02:39.058226

print(new_date.date()) #will print 2023-02-17

Output:

Current date:  2023-02-12 23:06:34.392314
New date:  2023-02-17 23:06:34.392314
2023-02-17

Example 5: Adding weeks to a given date

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import date

#adding weeks to date
date ='2023-02-12'

given_date = datetime.strptime(date,'%Y-%m-%d')
print('Given date: ',given_date)

result = given_date + timedelta(weeks = 2)
print("New date: ",result)

Output:

Given date:  2023-02-12 00:00:00
New date:  2023-02-26 00:00:00

Example 6: Adding weeks to current date

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import date

#adding weeks to current date
current_date = date.today()

print('Current date: ',current_date)

result = current_date + timedelta(weeks = 2)
print("New date: ",result)

Output:

Current date:  2023-02-12
New date:  2023-02-26

Example 7: Adding weeks using date() class

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import date

#adding weeks using date() 
current_date = date(2023,2,12)

print('Current date: ',current_date)

result = current_date + timedelta(weeks = 2)
print("New date: ",result)

Output:

Current date:  2023-02-12
New date:  2023-02-26

Real world applications of adding days to dates

• Locating files within the desired time constraint
• Handling timezones
• Printing current time, month and year.

For easy access visit this document for reference code and link.

Summary

In this article by using the datetime module or the timedelta module, we learnt how to add days to dates by passing the number of days as an input.

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