What's the simplest way to subtract a month from a date in Python?

Question

If only timedelta had a month argument in it\'s constructor. So what\'s the simplest way to do this?

EDIT: I wasn\'t thinking too hard about this as was poin

Answer 1

Here is some code to do just that. Haven't tried it out myself...

def add_one_month(t):
    """Return a `datetime.date` or `datetime.datetime` (as given) that is
    one month earlier.

    Note that the resultant day of the month might change if the following
    month has fewer days:

        >>> add_one_month(datetime.date(2010, 1, 31))
        datetime.date(2010, 2, 28)
    """
    import datetime
    one_day = datetime.timedelta(days=1)
    one_month_later = t + one_day
    while one_month_later.month == t.month:  # advance to start of next month
        one_month_later += one_day
    target_month = one_month_later.month
    while one_month_later.day < t.day:  # advance to appropriate day
        one_month_later += one_day
        if one_month_later.month != target_month:  # gone too far
            one_month_later -= one_day
            break
    return one_month_later

def subtract_one_month(t):
    """Return a `datetime.date` or `datetime.datetime` (as given) that is
    one month later.

    Note that the resultant day of the month might change if the following
    month has fewer days:

        >>> subtract_one_month(datetime.date(2010, 3, 31))
        datetime.date(2010, 2, 28)
    """
    import datetime
    one_day = datetime.timedelta(days=1)
    one_month_earlier = t - one_day
    while one_month_earlier.month == t.month or one_month_earlier.day > t.day:
        one_month_earlier -= one_day
    return one_month_earlier