| PackageDescription | date and time handling routines for Python
mxDateTime is a Python extension package that provides three new
objects, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let you
store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way than by
using ticks (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), the representation
used by Python's time module).
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You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and copy
them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks and some
other more esoteric values. In addition, there are several convenient
constructors and formatters at hand to greatly simplify dealing with
dates and times in real-world applications.
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In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the package
also exports a comfortable C API interface for other extensions to
build upon. This is especially interesting for database applications
which often have to deal with date/time values (the mxODBC package is
one example of an extension using this interface).
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mxDateTime can convert between various different date/time storage
formats, including COM dates, TJD, MJD, JDN, tuples and, probably
most important, strings.
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The date/time parser included in mxDateTime is one of the most
flexible such parser available for Python. It is constantly being
improved to make parsing date/time strings as easy as possible. At
the same time, it offers a fully customizable interface which allows
selecting valid date/time formats from a range of predefined
categories.
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There are also special parser and formatter modules for ARPA and ISO
date/time formats, which are handy if you work a lot with Internet
standards. |