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

You should use dateutil. With that, you can use relativedelta, it's an improved version of timedelta.

>>> import datetime 
>>> import dateutil.relativedelta
>>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> print now
2012-03-15 12:33:04.281248
>>> print now + dateutil.relativedelta.relativedelta(months=-1)
2012-02-15 12:33:04.281248