Pendulum: Python Datetimes Made Easy

While Python’s built-in datetime library is sufficient for basic use cases, it can become cumbersome when dealing with more complex scenarios.

Pendulum offers a more intuitive and user-friendly API, serving as a convenient drop-in replacement for the standard datetime class.

Here’s a comparison of syntax and functionality between the standard datetime library and Pendulum:

Creating a datetime

Datetime:

   from datetime import datetime
   now = datetime.now()

Pendulum:

   import pendulum
   now = pendulum.now()

Date arithmetic

Datetime:

   from datetime import timedelta
   future = now + timedelta(days=7)

Pendulum:

   future = now.add(days=7)

3. Timezone handling: Datetime (with pytz):

   import pytz
   utc_now = datetime.now(pytz.UTC)
   tokyo_tz = pytz.timezone('Asia/Tokyo')
   tokyo_time = utc_now.astimezone(tokyo_tz)

Pendulum:

   tokyo_time = now.in_timezone("Asia/Tokyo")

Parsing dates

Datetime:

   parsed = datetime.strptime("2023-05-15 14:30:00", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
   parsed = pytz.UTC.localize(parsed)

Pendulum:

   parsed = pendulum.parse("2023-05-15 14:30:00")

Time differences

Datetime:

   diff = parsed - now_utc
   print(f"Difference: {diff}")

Pendulum:

   diff = parsed - now
   print(f"Difference: {diff.in_words()}")

Key Advantages of Pendulum

• More intuitive API for date arithmetic and timezone handling
• Automatic timezone awareness (UTC by default)
• Flexible parsing without specifying exact formats
• Human-readable time differences

Link to Pendulum.