How do I calculate the date six months from the cu

Question

I am using the datetime Python module. I am looking to calculate the date 6 months from the current date. Could someone give me a little help doing this?

The reason I want to generate a date 6 months from the current date is to produce a Review Date. If the user enters data into the system it will have a review date of 6 months from the date they entered the data.

Answer 1

So, here is an example of the dateutil.relativedelta which I found useful for iterating through the past year, skipping a month each time to the present date:

>>> import datetime
>>> from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta
>>> today = datetime.datetime.today()
>>> month_count = 0
>>> while month_count < 12:
...  day = today - relativedelta(months=month_count)
...  print day
...  month_count += 1
... 
2010-07-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-06-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-05-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-04-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-03-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-02-07 10:51:45.187968
2010-01-07 10:51:45.187968
2009-12-07 10:51:45.187968
2009-11-07 10:51:45.187968
2009-10-07 10:51:45.187968
2009-09-07 10:51:45.187968
2009-08-07 10:51:45.187968

As with the other answers, you have to figure out what you actually mean by "6 months from now." If you mean "today's day of the month in the month six years in the future" then this would do:

datetime.datetime.now() + relativedelta(months=6)

Answer 2

I use this function to change year and month but keep day:

def replace_month_year(date1, year2, month2):
    try:
        date2 = date1.replace(month = month2, year = year2)
    except:
        date2 = datetime.date(year2, month2 + 1, 1) - datetime.timedelta(days=1)
    return date2

You should write:

new_year = my_date.year + (my_date.month + 6) / 12
new_month = (my_date.month + 6) % 12
new_date = replace_month_year(my_date, new_year, new_month)

Answer 3

Well, that depends what you mean by 6 months from the current date.

1. Using natural months:

   (day, month, year) = (day, (month+6)%12, year+(month+6)/12)
   

2. Using a banker's definition, 6*30:

   date += datetime.timedelta(6*30)
   

Answer 4

From this answer, see parsedatetime. Code example follows. More details: unit test with many natural-language -> YYYY-MM-DD conversion examples, and apparent parsedatetime conversion challenges/bugs.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import time, calendar
from datetime import date

# from https://github.com/bear/parsedatetime
import parsedatetime as pdt

def print_todays_date():
    todays_day_of_week = calendar.day_name[date.today().weekday()]
    print "today's date = " + todays_day_of_week + ', ' + \
                              time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

def convert_date(natural_language_date):
    cal = pdt.Calendar()
    (struct_time_date, success) = cal.parse(natural_language_date)
    if success:
        formal_date = time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d', struct_time_date)
    else:
        formal_date = '(conversion failed)'
    print '{0:12s} -> {1:10s}'.format(natural_language_date, formal_date)

print_todays_date()
convert_date('6 months')

The above code generates the following from a MacOSX machine:

$ ./parsedatetime_simple.py 
today's date = Wednesday, 2015-05-13
6 months     -> 2015-11-13
$ 

Answer 5

With Python 3.x you can do it like this:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from dateutil.relativedelta import *

date = datetime.now()
print(date)
# 2018-09-24 13:24:04.007620

date = date + relativedelta(months=+6)
print(date)
# 2019-03-24 13:24:04.007620

but you will need to install python-dateutil module:

pip install python-dateutil

Answer 6

I think it would be safer to do something like this instead of manually adding days:

import datetime
today = datetime.date.today()

def addMonths(dt, months = 0):
    new_month = months + dt.month
    year_inc = 0
    if new_month>12:
        year_inc +=1
        new_month -=12
    return dt.replace(month = new_month, year = dt.year+year_inc)

newdate = addMonths(today, 6)