Convert timedelta to floating-point

Question

I got a timedelta object from the subtraction of two datetimes. I need this value as floating point for further calculations. All that I've found enables the calculation with floating-points, but the result is still a timedelta object.

time_d = datetime_1 - datetime_2
time_d_float = float(time_d)

does not work.

Answer 1

You could use the total_seconds method:

time_d_float = time_d.total_seconds()

Answer 2

In recent versions of Python, you can divide two timedeltas to give a float. This is useful if you need the value to be in units other than seconds.

time_d_min = time_d / datetime.timedelta(minutes=1)
time_d_ms  = time_d / datetime.timedelta(milliseconds=1)

Answer 3

You could use numpy to solve that:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

time_d = datetime_1 - datetime_2

#for a single value
number_of_days =pd.DataFrame([time_d]).apply(np.float32)

#for a Dataframe
number_of_days = time_d.apply(np.float32)

Hope it is helpful!

Answer 4

If you needed the number of days as a floating number you can use timedelta's days attribute

time_d = datetime_1 - datetime_2
number_of_days = float(time_d.days)

Answer 5

I had the same problem before and I used timedelta.total_seconds to get Estimated duration into seconds with float and it works. I hope this works for you.

from datetime import timedelta,datetime

time_d = datetime_1 - datetime_2

time_d.total_seconds()