Natural/Relative days in Python

Question

I\'d like a way to show natural times for dated items in Python. Similar to how Twitter will show a message from \"a moment ago\", \"a few minutes ago\", \"two hours ago\",

Answer 1

There is the humanize package:

>>> import humanize
>>> import datetime
>>> humanize.naturalday(datetime.datetime.now())
'today'
>>> humanize.naturalday(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1))
'yesterday'
>>> humanize.naturalday(datetime.date(2007, 6, 5))
'Jun 05'
>>> humanize.naturaldate(datetime.date(2007, 6, 5))
'Jun 05 2007'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=1))
'a second ago'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=3600))
'an hour ago'

Examples for your use case:

>>> humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=36000))
'10 hours ago'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=360000))
'4 days ago'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=3600000))
'a month ago'

Further (see link above) it also supports humanization of:

• integers
• file sizes
• floats (to fractional numbers)