How can I sort out an object is datetime or date in python?

January 16, 2023

I am trying to develop a logic that depends on the type of the input being date or datetime. To achieve this goal, I used isinstance with datetime.date and datetime.datetime. Unfortunately, it seems like that a datetime.datetime object is considered an instance of datetime.date.

import datetime

date_obj = datetime.date.today()
datetime_obj = datetime.datetime.now()


type(date_obj)
# <class 'datetime.date'>

type(datetime_obj)
# <class 'datetime.datetime'>


isinstance(date_obj, datetime.date)
# True
isinstance(datetime_obj, datetime.date)
# True


isinstance(date_obj, datetime.datetime)
# False
isinstance(datetime_obj, datetime.date)
# True

I suspected that datetime.date might be considered a subclass of datetime.datetime but that’s not the case:

issubclass(datetime.date, datetime.datetime)
# False
issubclass(datetime.datetime, datetime.date)
# True

What’s the pythonic way of figureing out whether an object is a date or a datetime?

P.S. I checked this related question, but that doesn’t resolve my issue.

>Solution :

You can retrieve the exact type of the objects with type, and check whether it’s date or datetime using is:

>>> type(date_obj) is datetime.date
True
>>> type(date_obj) is datetime.datetime
False

>>> type(datetime_obj) is datetime.date
False
>>> type(datetime_obj) is datetime.datetime
True

Note that type objects are unique, so comparing them using is is well defined.