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How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘datetime.datetime’ object has no attribute ‘timedelta’

by | Programming, Python, Tips

This error occurs when you import the datetime class from the datetime module using

from datetime import datetime

and then try to call the timedelta method like datetime.timedelta().

You can solve this error by removing the extra datetime when calling timedelta() or use:

import datetime

instead of:

from datetime import datetime

This tutorial will go through the error in detail and how to solve it with code examples.

Table of contents

AttributeError: ‘datetime.datetime’ object has no attribute ‘timedelta’

AttributeError occurs in a Python program when we try to access an attribute (method or property) that does not exist for a particular object. datetime is a built-in Python module that supplies classes for manipulating dates and times. One of the classes in datetime is called datetime. It can be unclear when both the module and one of the classes share the same name. If you use the import syntax:

from datetime import datetime

You are importing the datetime class, not the datetime module. The class timedelta is an attribute of the datetime module. We can verify this by using dir().

import datetime

# dir of datetime module

attributes = dir(datetime)

print(attributes)

print('timedelta' in attributes)
['MAXYEAR', 'MINYEAR', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__', 'date', 'datetime', 'datetime_CAPI', 'sys', 'time', 'timedelta', 'timezone', 'tzinfo']

True

So if you use the import syntax:

from datetime import timedelta

You can create a datetime object using the timedelta class without using datetime.timedelta.

Example

Consider the following example where we want to create a list of strings representing dates in mmddyyy format. The dates will start on the current day and then go one week into the future.

First, we will get the current date using the now() method. Then, we will create a list to store the strings and append the current date to the list.

The next step involves a for loop over a range object and creating a datetime object for each day in the future.

For each datetime object, we call strftime to convert the object to a string representing the date then append the string to the list.

Let’s look at the code:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

today = datetime.now()

dates = []

dates.append(today.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

for i in range(0, 8):

   next_day = today + datetime.timedelta(days=i)

   dates.append(next_day.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

print(dates)

Let’s run the code to see what happens:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
Input In [7], in <cell line: 9>()
      7 dates.append(today.strftime("%m%d%Y"))
      9 for i in range(0, 7):
---> 11    next_day = today + datetime.timedelta(days=i)
     13    dates.append(next_day.strftime("%m%d%Y"))
     15 print(dates)

AttributeError: type object 'datetime.datetime' has no attribute 'timedelta'

The error occurs because we imported the datetime class. When we try to call timedelta we are trying to call datetime.datetime.timedelta, which does not exist.

Solution #1: Remove extra datetime

We can solve the error by removing the extra datetime, as we have imported the timedelta class. 

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

dates = []

today = datetime.now()

dates.append(today.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

for i in range(0, 8):

   next_day = today + timedelta(days=i)

   dates.append(next_day.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

print(dates)

Let’s run the code to see the result:

['05192022', '05192022', '05202022', '05212022', '05222022', '05232022', '05242022', '05252022', '05262022']

We successfully created a list of strings representing days from a starting date to a week in the future.

Solution #2: Use import datetime

The second way to solve this error is to import the datetime module and then access the timedelta constructor through datetime.timedelta(). Let’s look at that the revised code:

import datetime

dates = []

today = datetime.datetime.now()

dates.append(today.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

for i in range(0, 7):

   next_day = today + datetime.timedelta(days=i)

   dates.append(next_day.strftime("%m%d%Y"))

print(dates)

Let’s run the code to see the result:

['05192022', '05192022', '05202022', '05212022', '05222022', '05232022', '05242022', '05252022']

We successfully created a list of strings representing days from a starting date to a week in the future.

Summary

Congratulations on reading to the end of this tutorial! Remember that from datetime import datetime imports the datetime class and import datetime imports the datetime module.

For further reading on AttributeErrors involving datetime, go to the articles:

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Have fun and happy researching!