Python boto Purging Aws old Ebs Snapshots "TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'unicode' and 'datetime.timedelta'"

Question

I'm trying to write a python script to delete ebs snapshots which are 14 days old. problem is i could not able to display 2 weeks old date and compare that with current date. Below is my code

import boto
import dateutil.relativedelta
from boto.exception import EC2ResponseError
from datetime import timedelta, datetime

conn = boto.ec2.connect_to_region(
    'us-east-1',
    aws_access_key_id = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx',
    aws_secret_access_key = 'yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy',
 )

snaps = conn.get_all_snapshots()

for list in snaps:
    old_date = list.start_time - timedelta(days=14)
    if list.start_time (is less than or equal to) old_date:
       print conn.delete_snapshots(list.id)

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/swaroop/Documents/My_python/display_snapshots.py", line 28, in old_date = list.start_time - timedelta(days=14) TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'unicode' and 'datetime.timedelta'

Note: Snapshots display date format this way: 2013-12-19T11:11:43.000Z

Thanks

Swaroop.

Answer 1

In your code list.start_time returns start datetime as unicode string.

You need to convert it to datetime.timedelta

like

from dateutil import parser

and

for snap in snaps:
    limit = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=14)
    if parser.parse(snap.start_time).date() <= limit.date():
        #do your filter stuff here
        print conn.delete_snapshot(snap.id)

Note: First you can try with print snap.id, if it will return a valid result then you can do print conn.delete_snapshot(snap.id)