Python How to sleep until a specific timestamp "DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM:SS"

Question

So I have the following timestamp: 23-03-2023 10:11:00

How is it possible in python to sleep from the current time until the timestamp while printing the remaining time in hours-minutes-seconds?

I don't get quiet the logic of all the different timestamp formats.

I have seen several threads where just a simple time delta gets calculated but my intuition tells me that this is not the right way.

like this:

t1 = datetime.datetime.now()

# other stuff here
t2 = datetime.datetime.now()
delta = t2 - t1
if delta.seconds > WAIT:
    # do stuff
else:
    # sleep for a bit

Maybe you guys have any ideas.

Answer 1

Try subtracting the dates (but check that it's not negative), then using the .total_seconds() function to get the time difference in seconds:

import time
import datetime


def sleepUntil(t2):
    t1 = datetime.datetime.now()
    if t1 > t2:
        return
    td = t2 - t1
    for i in range(int(td.total_seconds()), 0, -1):
        print(f'{i//3600} hours, {(i//60)%60} minutes, and {i%60} seconds')
        time.sleep(1)


sleepUntil(datetime.datetime(2023, 3, 13, 9, 27, 50))