python date of the previous month

Question

I am trying to get the date of the previous month with python. Here is what i\'ve tried:

str( time.strftime(\'%Y\') ) + str( int(time.strftime(\'%m\'))-1 )
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Answer 1

datetime and the datetime.timedelta classes are your friend.

1. find today.
2. use that to find the first day of this month.
3. use timedelta to backup a single day, to the last day of the previous month.
4. print the YYYYMM string you're looking for.

Like this:

 import datetime
 today = datetime.date.today()
 first = today.replace(day=1)
 lastMonth = first - datetime.timedelta(days=1)
 print(lastMonth.strftime("%Y%m"))

201202 is printed.