Question

Datetime objects hurt my head for some reason. I am writing to figure out how to shift a date time object by 12 hours. I also need to know how to figure out if two date time object’s differ by say 1 minute or more.

Answer 1

The datetime library has a timedelta object specifically for this kind of thing:

import datetime

mydatetime = datetime.now() # or whatever value you want
twelvelater = mydatetime + datetime.timedelta(hours=12)
twelveearlier = mydatetime - datetime.timedelta(hours=12)

difference = abs(some_datetime_A - some_datetime_B)
# difference is now a timedelta object

# there are a couple of ways to do this comparision:
if difference > timedelta(minutes=1):
    print "Timestamps were more than a minute apart"

# or: 
if difference.total_seconds() > 60:
    print "Timestamps were more than a minute apart"