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Learning Python through PowerShell Concepts

Date and Time

Learn about date and time in Python and Powershell.

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Get date and time

Let’s begin by understanding how to retrieve date and time information.

System.DateTime

Getting date and time in PowerShell is done using the cmdlet Get-Date or using the [datetime] type accelerator.

Python 3.5
### date and time
Get-date
[datetime]::Now | Format-List
[datetime]::Now # local time
[datetime]::UtcNow # time in UTC

Under the hood, both methods call .net class’ System.DateTime to return rich DateTime objects. If we dig a little deeper, we’ll see that there is no difference at all in the returned objects.

[datetime].FullName
(Get-Date).GetType().FullName

If we pipe the results of the Get-Date cmdlet to Get-Member, we will find the member properties and methods of the DateTime object like Day, Hour, Minute, Second, AddDays(), and AddHours().

Get-Date | Get-Member

These properties can be utilized to get the current date and time:

Python 3.5
## using date time properties
## just date, time defaults to midnight
(Get-Date).Date
## date and time
(Get-Date).DateTime
## time of the day
(Get-Date).TimeOfDay
## other properties
(Get-Date).Day
(Get-Date).Hour
(Get-Date).Minute
(Get-Date).Year

Methods of class System.DateTime time objects can be used to perform various date-time operations like adding years, hours, or minutes to the current date.

## using date time methods
(Get-Date).AddYears(2) # current year +
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