finding first day of the month in python

Question

I'm trying to find the first day of the month in python with one condition: if my current date passed the 25th of the month, then the first date variable will hold the first date of the next month instead of the current month. I'm doing the following:

import datetime 
todayDate = datetime.date.today()
if (todayDate - todayDate.replace(day=1)).days > 25:
    x= todayDate + datetime.timedelta(30)
    x.replace(day=1)
    print x
else:
    print todayDate.replace(day=1)

is there a cleaner way for doing this?

Answer 1

Yes, first set a datetime to the start of the current month.

Second test if current date day > 25 and get a true/false on that. If True then add add one month to the start of month datetime object. If false then use the datetime object with the value set to the beginning of the month.

import datetime 
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

todayDate = datetime.date.today()
resultDate = todayDate.replace(day=1)

if ((todayDate - resultDate).days > 25):
    resultDate = resultDate + relativedelta(months=1)

print resultDate

Answer 2

Can be done on the same line

from datetime import datetime

datetime.today().replace(day=1)

Answer 3

Use arrow.

import arrow
arrow.utcnow().span('month')[0]

Answer 4

Use dateutil.

from datetime import date
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

today = date.today()
first_day = today.replace(day=1)
if today.day > 25:
    print(first_day + relativedelta(months=1))
else:
    print(first_day)