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Split URL at - With Python

Does anyone know how I can extract the end 6 characters in a absoloute URL e.g
/es/ideas-de-trading-y-noticias/el-ibex-35-insiste-en-buscar-los-7900-puntos-a-la-espera-de-las--221104
This is not a typical URL sometimetimes it ends -221104
Also, is there a way to turn 221104 into the date 04 11 2022 easily?
Thanks in advance
Mark

You should use the datetime module for parsing strings into datetimes, like so.
from datetime import datetime
url = 'https://www.ig.com/es/ideas-de-trading-y-noticias/el-ibex-35-insiste-en-buscar-los-7900-puntos-a-la-espera-de-las--221104'
datetime_string = url.split('--')[1]
date = datetime.strptime(datetime_string, '%y%m%d')
print(f"{date.day} {date.month} {date.year}")
the %y%m%d text tells the strptime method that the string of '221104' is formatted in the way that the first two letters are the year, the next two are the month, and the final two are the day.
Here is a link to the documentation on using this method:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior

If the url always has this structure (that is it has the date at the end after a -- and only has -- once), you can get the date with:
str_date = str(url).split("--")[1]
Relaxing the assumption to have only one --, we can have the code working by just taking the last element of the splitted list (again assuming the date is always at the end):
str_date = str(url).split("--")[-1]
(Thanks to #The Myth for pointing that out)
To convert the obtained date into a datetime.date object and get it in the format you want:
from datetime import datetime
datetime_date = datetime.strptime(str_date, "%y%m%d")
formatted_date = datetime_date.strftime("%d %m %Y")
print(formatted_date) # 04 11 2022
Docs:
strftime
strptime
behaviour of the above two functions and format codes

Taking into consideration the date is constant in the format yy-mm-dd. You can split the URL by:
url = "https://www.ig.com/es/ideas-de-trading-y-noticias/el-ibex-35-insiste-en-buscar-los-7900-puntos-a-la-espera-de-las--221104"
time = url[-6:] # Gets last 6 values
To convert yy-mm-dd into dd mm yy we will use the DateTime module:
import datetime as dt
new_time = dt.datetime.strptime(time, '%y%m%d') # Converts your date into datetime using the format
format_time = dt.datetime.strftime(new_time, '%d-%m-%Y') # Format
print(format_time)
The whole code looks like this:
url = "https://www.ig.com/es/ideas-de-trading-y-noticias/el-ibex-35-insiste-en-buscar-los-7900-puntos-a-la-espera-de-las--221104"
time = url[-6:] # Gets last 6 values
import datetime as dt
new_time = dt.datetime.strptime(time, '%y%m%d') # Converts your date into datetime using the format
format_time = dt.datetime.strftime(new_time, '%d %m %Y') # Format
print(format_time)
Learn more about datetime

You can use python built-in split function.
date = url.split("--")[1]
It gives us 221104
then you can modify the string by rearranging it
date_string = f"{date[4:6]} {date[2:4]} {date[0:2]}"
this gives us 04 11 22

Assuming that -- will only be there as it is in the url you posted, you can do something as follows:
You can split the URL at -- & extract the element
a = 'https://www.ig.com/es/ideas-de-trading-y-noticias/el-ibex-35-insiste-en-buscar-los-7900-puntos-a-la-espera-de-las--221104'
desired_value = a.split('--')[1]
& to convert:
from datetime import datetime
converted_date = datetime.strptime(desired_value , "%y%m%d")
formatted_date = datetime.strftime(converted_date, "%d %m %Y")

How to compare date in python? I have a month date year format and want to compare to the current date (within 7 days)

This is the data that is being returned from my API:
"Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMEST"
If I'm within 7 days of the current date which I'm getting by doing this:
from datetime import date
today = date.today()
print("Today's date:", today)
Just need to convert Jun to a number and 02 and compare to see if it's within 7 days in the future of the current date, then return True

APPROACH 0:
Given the format of your example data, you should be able to convert it to a datetime using this code:
datetime.strptime("Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMEST", "%b %d, %Y, %I %p%Z")
The details about this format string are here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-strptime-behavior
However, when I tested this locally, it worked for this input:
"Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMUTC"
but not for your input (which has different timezone):
"Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMEST"
I have investigated this some more and "read the docs" (https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html).
To get EST parsing to work, you would have to change your OS timezone and reset the time module's timezones like this:
from datetime import datetime
import os
import time
os.environ["TZ"] = "US/Eastern". # change timezone
time.tzset(). # reset time.tzname tuple
datetime.strptime("Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMEST", "%b %d, %Y, %I %p%Z")
When you're done, be safe and delete the "hacked" environment variable:
del os.environ["TZ"]
Note - Since your system timezone is presumably still UTC, it can still parse UTC timezone too.
See this thread for detailed discussion: https://bugs.python.org/issue22377
Also note that the timestamp is not actually captured. The result you get with EST and UTC is a naive datetime object.
APPROACH 1
So, it seems like there is a better way to approach this.
First, you need to pip install dateutils if you don't already have it.
THen do something like this:
from dateutil import parser
from dateutil.tz import gettz
tzinfos = {"EST": gettz("US/Eastern")}
my_datetime = parser.parse("Jun 02, 2021, 2 PM EST", tzinfos=tzinfos)
What's happening here is we use gettz to get timezone information from the timezones listed in usr/share/zoneinfo. Then the parse function can (fuzzy) parse your string (no format needs to be specified!) and returns my_datetime which has timezone information on it. Here are the parser docs: https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/parser.html
I don't know how many different timezones you need to deal with so the rest is up to you. Good luck.

Convert the date to a datetime structure and take the direct difference. Note that today must be a datetime, too.
import datetime
date_string = "Jun 02, 2021, 2 PMEST"
today = datetime.datetime.today()
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_string,
"%b %d, %Y, %I %p%Z") # Corrected
(date - today).days
#340

Convert Time to printable or localtime format

In my python code I get start and end time some thing like:
end = int(time.time())
start = end - 1800
Now start and end variables holds values like 1460420758 and 1460422558.
I am trying to convert it in a meaningful format like :
Mon Apr 11 17:50:25 PDT 2016
But am unable to do so, I tried:
time.strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y", time.gmtime(start))
Gives me
Tue Apr 12 00:25:58 2016
But not only the timezone but the H:M:S are wrong
As date returns me the below information:
$ date
Mon Apr 11 18:06:27 PDT 2016
How to correct it?

This one involves utilizing datetime to great the format you wish with the strftime module.
What's important is that the time information you get 'MUST' be UTC in order to do this. Otherwise, you're doomed D:
I'm using timedelta to 'add' hours to the time. It will also increments the date, too. I still would recommend using the module I shared above to handle time zones.
import time
# import datetime so you could play with time
import datetime
print int(time.time())
date = time.gmtime(1460420758)
# Transform time into datetime
new_date = datetime.datetime(*date[:6])
new_date = new_date + datetime.timedelta(hours=8)
# Utilize datetime's strftime and manipulate it to what you want
print new_date.strftime('%a %b %d %X PDT %Y')

Python - Sort Lines in File by Regex Date Match

I have a file (based on a class project) of scraped Tweets. At this point lines in the file look like:
#soandso something something Permalink 1:40 PM - 17 Feb 2016<br><br>
#soandso something something Permalink 1:32 PM - 16 Feb 2016<br><br>
I'm trying to sort the lines in the file by date. This is what I've cobbled together so far.
import re
from datetime import datetime
when = re.compile(r".+</a>(.+)<br><br>")
with open('tweets.txt','r+') as outfile:
sortme = outfile.read()
for match in re.finditer(when, sortme):
tweet = match.group(0)
when = match.group(1)
when = datetime.strptime(when, " %I:%M %p - %d %b %Y")
print when
Which will print out all the dates in the lines having converted the format
from 1:40 PM - 17 Feb 2016 to 2016-02-17 13:40:00, which I believe is a datetime. I have searched high and low over the last few days for clues about how I'd then sort all the lines in the file by datetime. Thanks for your help!

I have searched high and low over the last few days for clues about how I'd then sort all the lines in the file by datetime.
def get_time(line):
match = re.search(r"</a>\s*(.+?)\s*<br><br>", line)
if match:
return datetime.strptime(match.group(1), "%I:%M %p - %d %b %Y")
return datetime.min
lines.sort(key=get_time)
It assumes that the time is monotonous in the given time period (e.g., no DST transitions) otherwise you should convert the input time to UTC (or POSIX timestamp) first.

It seems you have already solved the regex problem... so to convert your datetime into a measurable quantity convert to seconds like so:
import time
time.mktime(when.timetuple())
then for sorting you can make a lot off different routes. the simplest example is:
import operator
s = [("ab",50),("cd",100),("ef",15)]
print sorted(s,key=operator.itemgetter(1))
## [('ef', 15), ('ab', 50), ('cd', 100)]

Python - Time delta from string and now()

I have spent some time trying to figure out how to get a time delta between time values. The only issue is that one of the times was stored in a file. So I have one string which is in essence str(datetime.datetime.now()) and datetime.datetime.now().
Specifically, I am having issues getting a delta because one of the objects is a datetime object and the other is a string.
I think the answer is that I need to get the string back in a datetime object for the delta to work.
I have looked at some of the other Stack Overflow questions relating to this including the following:
Python - Date & Time Comparison using timestamps, timedelta
Comparing a time delta in python
Convert string into datetime.time object
Converting string into datetime
Example code is as follows:
f = open('date.txt', 'r+')
line = f.readline()
date = line[:26]
now = datetime.datetime.now()
then = time.strptime(date)
delta = now - then # This does not work
Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong?
For reference, the first 26 characters are acquired from the first line of the file because this is how I am storing time e.g.
f.write(str(datetime.datetime.now())
Which would write the following:
2014-01-05 13:09:42.348000

time.strptime returns a struct_time.
datetime.datetime.now() returns a datetime object.
The two can not be subtracted directly.
Instead of time.strptime you could use datetime.datetime.strptime, which returns a datetime object. Then you could subtract now and then.
For example,
import datetime as DT
now = DT.datetime.now()
then = DT.datetime.strptime('2014-1-2', '%Y-%m-%d')
delta = now - then
print(delta)
# 3 days, 8:17:14.428035
By the way, you need to supply a date format string to time.strptime or DT.datetime.strptime.
time.strptime(date)
should have raised a ValueError.
It looks like your date string is 26 characters long. That might mean you have a date string like 'Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:04:17 '.
If that is true, you may want to parse it like this:
then = DT.datetime.strptime('Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:04:17 '.strip(), "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S")
print(then)
# 2011-06-10 11:04:17
There is a table describing the available directives (like %Y, %m, etc.) here.

Try this:
import time
import datetime
d = datetime.datetime.now()
now = time.mktime(d.timetuple())
And then apply the delta

if you have the year,month,day of 'then' you may use:
year = 2013
month = 1
day = 1
now_date = datetime.datetime.now()
then_date = now_date.replace(year = year, month = month, day = day)
delta = now_date - then_date