How to find the difference in minutes between two dates in python ?

Examples of how to find the difference in minutes between two dates in python:

1 -- Create two dates

Let's create two dates objects in python using the module datetime:

import datetime

year = 2008
month = 7
day = 8
hour = 12
minute = 47
second = 0

time1 = datetime.datetime(year,month,day,hour,minute,second)

hour = 14
minute = 20

time2 = datetime.datetime(year,month,day,hour,minute,second)

2 -- Example 1 using total_seconds() function:

A solution is to then calculate the difference

time_delta = time2 - time1

and to extract the difference in seconds using total_seconds():

delta_in_seconds = time_delta.total_seconds()

print(delta_in_seconds)

5580.0

that can be converted in minutes (since 1 minute = 60 seconds):

delta_in_minutes = delta_in_seconds / 60.

print(delta_in_minutes)

which returns here:

93.0

minutes difference between the two dates.

3 -- Exemple 2

Another example:

delta_in_seconds = time_delta.seconds

print(delta_in_seconds)

delta_in_minutes = delta_in_seconds / 60.

print(delta_in_minutes)

4 -- Fraction of a minute

In the case the difference in minutes between the two dates is not an integer, a solution is to use divmod():

hour = 14
minute = 20
second = 25

time2 = datetime.datetime(year,month,day,hour,minute,second)

time_delta = time2 - time1

delta_in_seconds = time_delta.total_seconds()

delta_in_minutes = divmod(delta_in_seconds, 60)

print(delta_in_minutes)
print('Time difference : {} minutes and {} seconds'.format(delta_in_minutes[0],delta_in_minutes[1]))

returns

(93.0, 25.0)
Time difference : 93.0 minutes and 25.0 seconds

5 -- References

• Python Difference between two dates (in minutes) using datetime.timedelta() method
• How to calculate a time difference in minutes in Python