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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Dates and Times Timedelta Minute

Code Challenge: Returning Minutes

I'm not sure why this isn't working.

import datetime

def minutes(dt1, dt2):
  mints1 = dt1.minute
  mints2 = dt2.minute
  mints = round(dt2 - dt1)
  return mints

2 Answers

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points

A couple things:

  • Taking just the minute property out of a datetime object is going to cause problems here. Let's say my datetime object it was (2009, 1, 6, 15, 8, 24, 78915) - it's just going to return '8', it's going to ignore all the other stuff.

  • When you calculated mints = round(dt2 - dt1) you're using the original datetime arguments that were passed in, and you're not using the mints1 and mints2 variables that you just created.

Here's my solution. When you subtract one datetime object from another datetime object, you get a timedelta object - delta being "change", so this is an object representing a change in time. Then you can call the total_seconds() method on a timedelta object, and you can divide that number by 60 to get minutes, and then round that number.

def minutes(dt1, dt2):
    change = dt2 - dt1
    seconds = change.total_seconds()
    minutes = seconds / 60
    return round(minutes)
vikram choudermet
vikram choudermet
5,701 Points

import datetime def minutes(old, new): old = datetime.datetime.now() new = datetime.datetime.now() - old return (round(new.seconds/60))