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pythondatetimepython-datetimepython-dateutil

Elegant way to convert python datetime.timedelta to dateutil.relativedelta


Is there an elegant was to convert between relativedelta and timedelta?

The use case is getting user input ISO date. Python's isodate will return either isodate.duration.Duration or datetime.timedelta.

We need the features of relativedelta (per What is the difference between "datetime.timedelta" and "dateutil.relativedelta.relativedelta" when working only with days? -- it does more) so need to convert both these types to a relativedata.


Solution

  • Just take the total number of seconds and microseconds, that's all a timedelta object stores:

    def to_relativedelta(tdelta):
        return relativedelta(seconds=int(tdelta.total_seconds()),
                             microseconds=tdelta.microseconds)
    
    >>> to_relativedelta(timedelta(seconds=0.3))
    relativedelta(microseconds=+300000)
    >>> to_relativedelta(timedelta(seconds=3))
    relativedelta(seconds=+3)
    >>> to_relativedelta(timedelta(seconds=300))
    relativedelta(minutes=+5)
    >>> to_relativedelta(timedelta(seconds=3000000))
    relativedelta(days=+34, hours=+17, minutes=+20)