Add minutes to current time in Python?

Learn about different ways to add a few minutes to current time in python. We will be doing it in three ways using timedelta, pandas or relativedelta.

Add minutes to current time in Python using timedelta

Python provides a module datetime for manipulation of date and time. It consists of following classes – date, time, datetime, timedelta and tzinfo. The timedelta represents a duration, that represents the difference between two dates or times or datetimes.

To add few minutes to current time, we are going to use the datetime and timedelta classes of the datetime module.

Steps to add N minutes to datetime are as follows,

• Step 1: Get the current time in python using datetime.now(). It returns a datetime object pointing to the current time in local time zone.
• Step 2: Create an object of timedelta, to represent an interval of N minutes. For that, pass the argument minutes with value N in the timedelta constructor.
• Step 3: Add the timedelta object to the datetime object pointing to current time. It will give us a new datetime object, pointing to a new timestamp in future i.e. N minutes from now.
• Step 4: If you want the final timestamp in string format, then convert the datetime object to string using strftime(). You can pass the format string as argument and it will convert the datetime object to a string of the specified format.

Let’s understand with an example,

Add 2 minutes to current time in python

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

# Get current time in local timezone
current_time = datetime.now()
print('Current timestamp: ', current_time)

n = 2
# Add 2 minutes to datetime object containing current time
future_time = current_time + timedelta(minutes=n)

print('Future Time (2 minutes from now ): ', future_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
future_time_str = future_time.strftime('%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Future Time as string object: ', future_time_str)

Output

Current timestamp:  2021-06-26 13:56:46.411363
Future Time (2 minutes from now ):  2021-06-26 13:58:46.411363
Future Time as string object:  06-26-2021 13:58:46.411363 

First we fetched the current time using datetime.now() function and then added 2 minutes to the current time using timedelta. It gave us a new datetime object, pointing to a future timestamp i.e. 2 minutes from now. Then we converted the datetime object to the required string format using datetime.strftime(). If your timestamp string is of some other format, then you can change the format according to that while using strptime() & strftime().

Add minutes to current time in Python using Pandas

Pandas provide a class DateOffset, to store the duration or interval information. It is mostly used to increment or decrement a timestamp. It can be used with datetime module to add N minutes to current time. Let’s understand with an example,

Add 2 minutes to current time in python

from datetime import datetime
import pandas as pd

# Get current time in local timezone
current_time = datetime.now()
print('Current timestamp: ', current_time)

n = 2
# Add 2 minutes to datetime object containing current time
future_time = current_time + pd.DateOffset(minutes=n)

print('Future Time (2 minutes from now ): ', future_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
future_time_str = future_time.strftime('%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Future Time as string object: ', future_time_str)

Output

Current timestamp:  2021-06-26 13:56:48.657128
Future Time (2 minutes from now ):  2021-06-26 13:58:48.657128
Future Time as string object:  06-26-2021 13:58:48.657128

We created a DateOffset object by passing minutes argument as 2. Then we added this DateOffset object to the datetime object pointing to the current time. It returned a new datetime object pointing to a future timestamp i.e. 2 minutes from now.

Add minutes to current time in python using relativedelta

In python, the dateutil module provides a class relativedelta, which represents an interval of time. The relativedelta class has all the attributes to represent a duration i.e. Year, Month, Day, Hours, Minutes, Seconds and Microseconds. So, to add minutes to a current time, we can create a relativedelta object to represents the interval in minutes and then add it to the datetime object containing the current time. Let’s understand with an example,

Add 2 minutes to current time in python

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

# Get current time in local timezone
current_time = datetime.now()
print('Current timestamp: ', current_time)

n = 2
# Add 2 minutes to datetime object containing current time
future_time = current_time + relativedelta(minutes=n)

print('Future Time (2 minutes from now ): ', future_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
future_time_str = future_time.strftime('%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Future Time as string object: ', future_time_str)

Output

Current timestamp:  2021-06-26 13:56:48.657128
Future Time (2 minutes from now ):  2021-06-26 13:58:48.657128
Future Time as string object:  06-26-2021 13:58:48.657128

We fetched the current timestamp as datetime object using datetime.now(). Then we created a relativedelta object representing 2 minutes by passing minutes argument as 2. Then added that to the datetime object. It returned a new datetime object pointing to a future timestamp i.e. two minutes from now.

Summary:

We learned about three different ways to add N minutes to current time in python.