How can I produce a human readable difference when subtracting two UNIX timestamps using Python?

Question

This question is similar to this question about subtracting dates with Python, but not identical. I\'m not dealing with strings, I have to figure out the difference between

Answer 1

A little improvement over @Schnouki's solution with a single line list comprehension. Also displays the plural in case of plural entities (like hours)

Import relativedelta

>>> from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

A lambda function

>>> attrs = ['years', 'months', 'days', 'hours', 'minutes', 'seconds']
>>> human_readable = lambda delta: ['%d %s' % (getattr(delta, attr), attr if getattr(delta, attr) > 1 else attr[:-1]) 
...     for attr in attrs if getattr(delta, attr)]

Example usage:

>>> human_readable(relativedelta(minutes=125))
['2 hours', '5 minutes']
>>> human_readable(relativedelta(hours=(24 * 365) + 1))
['365 days', '1 hour']