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

import datetime


'''
Created on 2011-03-09

@author: tonydiep
'''

def add_business_months(start_date, months_to_add):
    """
    Add months in the way business people think of months. 
    Jan 31, 2011 + 1 month = Feb 28, 2011 to business people
    Method: Add the number of months, roll back the date until it becomes a valid date
    """
    # determine year
    years_change = months_to_add / 12

    # determine if there is carryover from adding months
    if (start_date.month + (months_to_add % 12) > 12 ):
        years_change = years_change + 1

    new_year = start_date.year + years_change

    # determine month
    work = months_to_add % 12
    if 0 == work:
        new_month = start_date.month
    else:
        new_month = (start_date.month + (work % 12)) % 12

    if 0 == new_month:
        new_month = 12 

    # determine day of the month
    new_day = start_date.day
    if(new_day in [31, 30, 29, 28]):
        #user means end of the month
        new_day = 31


    new_date = None
    while (None == new_date and 27 < new_day):
        try:
            new_date = start_date.replace(year=new_year, month=new_month, day=new_day)
        except:
            new_day = new_day - 1   #wind down until we get to a valid date

    return new_date


if __name__ == '__main__':
    #tests
    dates = [datetime.date(2011, 1, 31),
             datetime.date(2011, 2, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 3, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 4, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 5, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 6, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 7, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 8, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 9, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 10, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 11, 28),
             datetime.date(2011, 12, 28),
             ]
    months = range(1, 24)
    for start_date in dates:
        for m in months:
            end_date = add_business_months(start_date, m)
            print("%s\t%s\t%s" %(start_date, end_date, m))

Answer 2

import datetime
print (datetime.date.today() + datetime.timedelta(6*365/12)).isoformat()

Answer 3

I have a better way to solve the 'February 31st' problem:

def add_months(start_date, months):
    import calendar

    year = start_date.year + (months / 12)
    month = start_date.month + (months % 12)
    day = start_date.day

    if month > 12:
        month = month % 12
        year = year + 1

    days_next = calendar.monthrange(year, month)[1]
    if day > days_next:
        day = days_next

    return start_date.replace(year, month, day)

I think that it also works with negative numbers (to subtract months), but I haven't tested this very much.

Answer 4

How about this? Not using another library (dateutil) or timedelta? building on vartec's answer I did this and I believe it works:

import datetime

today = datetime.date.today()
six_months_from_today = datetime.date(today.year + (today.month + 6)/12, (today.month + 6) % 12, today.day)

I tried using timedelta, but because it is counting the days, 365/2 or 6*356/12 does not always translate to 6 months, but rather 182 days. e.g.

day = datetime.date(2015, 3, 10)
print day
>>> 2015-03-10

print (day + datetime.timedelta(6*365/12))
>>> 2015-09-08

I believe that we usually assume that 6 month's from a certain day will land on the same day of the month but 6 months later (i.e. 2015-03-10 --> 2015-09-10, Not 2015-09-08)

I hope you find this helpful.

Answer 5

General function to get next date after/before x months.

from datetime import date

def after_month(given_date, month):
    yyyy = int(((given_date.year * 12 + given_date.month) + month)/12)
    mm = int(((given_date.year * 12 + given_date.month) + month)%12)

    if mm == 0:
        yyyy -= 1
        mm = 12
    return given_date.replace(year=yyyy, month=mm)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    today = date.today()
    print(today)

    for mm in [-12, -1, 0, 1, 2, 12, 20 ]:
        next_date = after_month(today, mm)
        print(next_date)

Answer 6

I found this solution to be good. (This uses the python-dateutil extension)

from datetime import date
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

six_months = date.today() + relativedelta(months=+6)

The advantage of this approach is that it takes care of issues with 28, 30, 31 days etc. This becomes very useful in handling business rules and scenarios (say invoice generation etc.)

$ date(2010,12,31)+relativedelta(months=+1)
  datetime.date(2011, 1, 31)

$ date(2010,12,31)+relativedelta(months=+2)
  datetime.date(2011, 2, 28)