Simple time comparison

[superwave33]

Hi,

I have been struggling with this for 2 days and can't seem to find the recipe.
I simply want to compare the current time with two time boundaries, simple enough right? I don't want to deal with dates, times only.

I would like to run something like this:

t1 = '09:00:00'
t2 = '17:00:00'

timeStart = datetime.strptime(t1, '%H:%M:%S')
timeEnd = datetime.strptime(t2, '%H:%M:%S')

while datetime.now > timeStart and datetime.now < timeEnd:
#do stuff

By the way, I am running Python 3.8 with Visual Studio 2017.
Also I took the following example on this site and remove superfluous stuff but the while loop never stops:
while True:
now_time = datetime.time()
timeon_time = datetime.time(23, 00, 00, 000000)
if now_time<timeon_time: print("ok")
else: print("stop")

Thanks in advance!

[pyzyx3qwerty]

Please use proper code tags while writing a post.
When you say compare, what exactly do you mean? Like, do you want to see how far away is that random time from the current time, or something else?

[superwave33]

Hi,
Thanks for letting me know about the code tags, it really is neater.
To answer your question pyzyx3qwerty, when I say compare, I simply mean that I want to run some code while the current time is between t1 and t2. I want the code to stop when it's going to be 17:00:00, nothing psychedelic. I am converting my VB .Net code to Python. This is bit of VB .Net code I want to convert:

While TimeValue(Now) > TimeValue("09:00:00") And TimeValue(Now) < TimeValue("17:00:00")
'do stuff
End While

Thanks again

import datetime

if __name__ == "__main__" :
    t1 = '09:00:00'
    t2 = '17:00:00'

    timeStart = datetime.strptime(t1, '%H:%M:%S')
    timeEnd = datetime.strptime(t2, '%H:%M:%S')

    while datetime.now > timeStart and datetime.now < timeEnd:
        print("ok")
    print("stop")

Output:
None

Error:
Exeption User-Unhandled
AttributeError: module 'datetime' has no attribute 'strptime'

[deanhystad]

strptime is in the "time" module. It is also in datetime.datetime.

[DeaD_EyE]

import datetime


if __name__ == "__main__" :
    t1 = '09:00:00'
    t2 = '17:00:00'
 
    time_start = datetime.datetime.strptime(t1, '%H:%M:%S')
    time_end = datetime.datetime.strptime(t2, '%H:%M:%S')
 
    while time_start < datetime.datetime.now() < time_end:
        print("ok")
    print("stop")

[superwave33]

Hi deanhystad and DeaD_EyE,

Thanks for your answers and sorry for answering inside your reputation ratings...newbie here...
I have tried Dead_EyE's suggestion but the only output I get is 'stop'. My loop does not work.

I have divided my code into pieces and found out that the conditions don't work because datetime.datetime.now()
holds milliseconds whereas the other values don't.

I then tried to declare cast the output of datetime.datetime.now()) into a string and assign it to t0 as follows and
changed the formatting of all variables to include milliseconds but no luck.

Any suggestion is more than welcome

    t0 = str(datetime.datetime.now())
    t1 = "18:28:00.000000"
    t2 = "18:30:00.000000"

    timeNow = datetime.datetime.strptime(t0, "%H:%M:%S.%f")
    timeStart = datetime.datetime.strptime(t1, "%H:%M:%S.%f")
    timeEnd = datetime.datetime.strptime(t2, "%H:%M:%S.%f")

Output:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\User\Desktop\stockwatch\stockwatch_py\stockwatch_py\stockwatch_py\module1.py", line 122, in <module>
    timeNow = datetime.datetime.strptime(t0, "%H:%M:%S.%f")
  File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\_strptime.py", line 577, in _strptime_datetime
    tt, fraction, gmtoff_fraction = _strptime(data_string, format)
  File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\_strptime.py", line 359, in _strptime
    (data_string, format))
ValueError: time data '2020-04-14 18:35:48.158411' does not match format '%H:%M:%S.%f'