Subtract hours from datetime in Python

In this article, we will discuss different ways to subtract hours from a given timestamp in python using timedelta, pandas or relativedelta.

Suppose you have a timestamp as string and you want to subtract N hours from it, where N can be any number. But you want the final timestamp after subtracting N hours, in the given string format. Let’s see how to do that,

Subtract hours from a timestamp in Python using timedelta

Python provides a module datetime for manipulation of date and time. It consists of following classes,

  • datetime.date: An object of date class specifies a date using year, month and day.
  • datetime.time: An object of time class specifies a timestamp using hour, minute, second, microsecond, and tzinfo.
  • datetime.datetime: An object of datetime is a combination of a date and a time.
  • datetime.timedelta: A duration, that represents the difference between two dates or times or datetimes.
  • datetime.tzinfo: It contains the timezone information.

To subtract hours from a given timestamp, we are going to use the datetime and timedelta classes of the datetime module.

Steps to subtract N hours from datetime are as follows,

Step 1: If the given timestamp is in a string format, then we need to convert it to the datetime object. For that we can use the datetime.strptime() function. Whereas, if the given timestamp is already a datetime object, then you can skip this step.
Step 2: Create an object of timedelta, to represent an interval of N hours. For that, pass the argument hours with value N in the timedelta constructor.
Step 3: Subtract the timedelta object from the datetime object. It will give us a new datetime object, pointing to a new timestamp i.e. N hours before the given timestamp.
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,

Subtract 2 hours from a timestamp in python

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

# Given timestamp in string
time_str = '24/7/2021 11:13:08.230010'
date_format_str = '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f'

# create datetime object from timestamp string
given_time = datetime.strptime(time_str, date_format_str)

print('Given Time: ', given_time)

n = 2
# Subtract 2 hours from datetime object
final_time = given_time - timedelta(hours=n)

print('Final Time (2 hours ahead of given time ): ', final_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
final_time_str = final_time.strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Final Time as string object: ', final_time_str)

Output

Given Time:  2021-07-24 11:13:08.230010
Final Time (2 hours ahead of given time ):  2021-07-24 09:13:08.230010
Final Time as string object:  24/07/2021 09:13:08.230010

We subtracted 2 hours from the timestamp ’24/7/2021 11:13:08.230010′ to make it ’24/07/2021 09:13:08.230010′.

As we subtracted a timedelta (of 2 hours duration) from the datetime object, so it returned a new datetime object, pointing to the new timestamp. 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().

Subtract hours from given timestamp 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 subtract N hours from a datetime. Let’s understand with an example,

Subtract 3 hours from a datetime in python

from datetime import datetime
import pandas as pd

# Given timestamp in string
time_str = '24/7/2021 11:13:08.230010'
date_format_str = '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f'

# create datetime object from timestamp string
given_time = datetime.strptime(time_str, date_format_str)

print('Given Time: ', given_time)

n = 3
# Subtract 3 hours from datetime object
final_time = given_time - pd.DateOffset(hours=n)

print('Final Time (3 hours ahead of given time ): ', final_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
final_time_str = final_time.strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Final Time as string object: ', final_time_str)

Output

Given Time:  2021-07-24 11:13:08.230010
Final Time (3 hours ahead of given time ):  2021-07-24 08:13:08.230010 
Final Time as string object:  24/07/2021 08:13:08.230010

We created a DateOffset object by passing hours argument as 3. Then we subtracted this DateOffset object to the datetime object. It returned a new datetime object pointing to a new timestamp i.e. 3 hours ahead of the given timestamp.

Subtract hours from given timestamp 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 subtract hours from a given timestamp, we can create a relativedelta object to represents the interval in hours and then subtract it from the datetime object containing give date. Let’s understand with an example,

Subtract 30 hours from a timestamp in python

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

# Given timestamp in string
time_str = '24/7/2021 11:13:08.230010'
date_format_str = '%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f'

# create datetime object from timestamp string
given_time = datetime.strptime(time_str, date_format_str)

print('Given Time: ', given_time)

n = 30
# Subtract 3 hours from datetime object
final_time = given_time - relativedelta(hours=n)

print('Final Time (30 hours ahead of given time ): ', final_time)

# Convert datetime object to string in specific format 
final_time_str = final_time.strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S.%f')
print('Final Time as string object: ', final_time_str)

Output

Given Time:  2021-07-24 11:13:08.230010
Final Time (30 hours ahead of given time ):  2021-07-23 05:13:08.230010
Final Time as string object:  23/07/2021 05:13:08.230010

As given timestamp was in string, so first we converted it to the datetime object. After that we created a relativedelta object representing 30 hours by passing hours argument as 30. Then subtracted that from the datetime object. It returned a new datetime object pointing to a new timestamp i.e. 30 hours ahead of the given timestamp.

Summary:

We learned about three different ways to subtract N hours fromchrome a timestamp in python.

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