Check if Date is Greater than Today in Python

Use Comparison Operator with now()

To check if the specified date is greater than today in Python:

• Use .datetime.now() to get the current local time and date.
• Create a datetime object using datetime.datetime() with the specified date and time.
• Use the greater than(>) operator with if-else to assess if the given date is greater than today.

The above code will show us the following output.

First, let’s understand what we mean by checking if a date is greater than today.

For instance, if we have a current date/time and some date/time from the future then the future’s date/time would be greater than the current date/time.

Similarly, the current date/time would be greater than the date/time of any day from the past.

Next, we imported the datetime module to work with date and time while checking if the specified date is greater than today or not but if your project requires date only then you are required to import the date class as from datetime import date.

After that, we used the datetime.datetime.now() function to have the current local time and date. Mostly, learners get confused to see datetime twice while using the now() function but it’s very simple.

Here, the first datetime is the module, the second datetime is the class and now() is a function of the datetime class which belongs to the datetime module.

Then, we instantiated the datetime class by specifying a future’s date/time. Lastly, we used the if-else statement which printed True if the given date/time is greater than today; otherwise False.

Now suppose, there might be a situation where we have to compare the given date/time with a different time zone’s current date/time. Let’s see how we can do that.

Compare the datetime of Different Time Zones

To examine if the date is greater than the different time zone’s today in Python:

• Use .datetime.now() by specifying a different time zone, we are using Pacific Standard Time here.
• Instantiate datetime by passing date and time.
• Use localize() to make naive time zone aware.
• Use the greater than(>) operator with if-else to compare two dates and print the results accordingly, True if the condition satisfies; otherwise False.

The above code fence gives us the following output on successful execution.

The above code’s logic is similar to the one we implemented in the previous code block but we used the pytz library. Note that, you must have pytz installed on your machine.

The above program got the current date according to Pacific Standard Time. Here, datetime.timezone() implemented the tzinfo which was set to None in the previous example and that’s its default behaviour.

While datetime.timedelta() returned the duration which denotes the difference between two datetime, time or date objects to the microsecond resolution.

Next, we created a datetime object which contains the local date and time.

Remember that the datetime instance is naive by default so, we had to make both objects either aware datetime or naive datetime; otherwise, the code will generate TypeError saying can not compare offset-aware and offset-naive datetimes.

To avoid this error, we used the localize() method of the utc class which belongs to the pytz module. The utc.localize() is used to make a naive time zone aware.

Now the point is, how will we know which variable is naive or aware? An aware datetime has an associated time zone while naive doesn’t. So, the variable today is the aware datetime and date is the naive datetime.

Finally, we used if-else to compare both dates which resulted in True if date > today fulfils; otherwise, False.

Till this point, we were given date/time in numbers but assume that the project requires to get the date as string input in a specific format. For instance, we want to have dates as dd/mm/YYYY format.

Let’s learn how we can convert that string input to a datetime object and compare them.

Use Comparison Operator with strptime()

To look over if the date is greater than today in Python:

• Use strptime() to specify a date as a string type value in the dd/mm/YYYY format.
• Use the now() function to get the current local time and date.
• Use the greater than(>) operator with if-else to compare where the date is greater than today or not and print True or False accordingly.

It will give us the following outcome.

In this code block, we used the strptime() method of the datetime class which belongs to the datetime module. It took two parameters; the first is the date in string format and the second is the format in which we want to represent the given date.

Further, the strptime() converts this specific format of string type date to a datetime object. After that, we get the current local date/time using .datetime.now().

Finally, the if-else statement is used to compare both results and display True/False based on the if condition. We’ll get True if the condition is satisfied; otherwise, False.