Why does it make a difference if I add 1 hour to t

Question

Example Code

from datetime import datetime, timezone, timedelta
import pytz

t11 = datetime(1918, 4, 15, 0, 0, tzinfo=timezone.utc).astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin'))
t12 = t11 + timedelta(hours=1)

t2 = datetime(1918, 4, 15, 1, 0, tzinfo=timezone.utc).astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin'))

print(t12)
print(t2)

Observed

1918-04-15 02:00:00+01:00
1918-04-15 03:00:00+02:00

Expected

I expected both to be what I see for t2. The crucial difference is t2.hour vs t12.hour. For a timezone-aware datetime object, I expected the hour to be the local hour.

Question

How can I change this behaviour? What is the reason for having it like this?

Answer 1

I will not accept the following, because it only explains how to do it right. It doesn't explain why adding timedelta doesn't work the expected way in the first place.

How to fix it

This answer suggests to take the following approach:

from datetime import datetime, timezone, timedelta
import pytz

# Timezone-aware object to start with
t11 = datetime(1918, 4, 15, 0, 0, tzinfo=timezone.utc).astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin'))

# Extract timezone information
tzinfo = t11.tzinfo

# Convert to UTC, add timedelta, convert to local timezone
t13 = (t11.astimezone(pytz.timezone('utc')) + timedelta(hours=1)).astimezone(tzinfo)

Another way to do it:

t14 = t11 + timedelta(hours=1)  # Invalid timezone!
t14 = t14.astimezone(pytz.utc).astimezone(t14.tzinfo)  # Fix the timezone

Now I have:

t11: 1918-04-15 01:00:00+01:00
t13: 1918-04-15 03:00:00+02:00  # one hour more and +1h because of DST

Pendulum

The package pendulum is another way to fix it:

from pendulum import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
import pytz

t11 = datetime(1918, 4, 15, 0, 0).astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin'))
t12 = t11 + timedelta(hours=1)

t2 = datetime(1918, 4, 15, 1, 0).astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin'))

gives:

t11: 1918-04-15T01:00:00+01:00
t12: 1918-04-15T03:00:00+02:00
t2 : 1918-04-15T03:00:00+02:00