Python select random date in current year

Question

In Python can you select a random date from a year. e.g. if the year was 2010 a date returned could be 15/06/2010

Massacre

Answer 1

It's much simpler to use ordinal dates (according to which today's date is 734158):

from datetime import date
import random

start_date = date.today().replace(day=1, month=1).toordinal()
end_date = date.today().toordinal()
random_day = date.fromordinal(random.randint(start_date, end_date))

This will fail for dates before 1AD.

Joplin

+1 Very neat! I didn't know what ordinal dates was before :-) Clearly better and prettier then my timstamp-solution, which has even greater limitations on "dates before"... – Kermie

The question was "random date from a year", not between Jan 1st and today. – Exoergic

But the title was "select random date in current year". To get random date in an arbitrary year you just have to calculate different start and end dates, e.g.: start_date = date(day=1, month=1, year=MY_YEAR).toordinal() and end_date = date(day=31, month=12, year=MY_YEAR).toordinal() . – Joplin

Just would like to add we can now also create datetime objects via datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04') which may or not be easier to type and read for you :) – Travers

Answer 2

Not directly, but you could add a random number of days to January 1st. I guess the following should work for the Gregorian calendar:

from datetime import date, timedelta
import random
import calendar

# Assuming you want a random day of the current year
firstJan = date.today().replace(day=1, month=1) 

randomDay = firstJan + timedelta(days = random.randint(0, 365 if calendar.isleap(firstJan.year) else 364))

Exoergic

Nice. There's actually an isleap() function in the calendar module, which would save defining it yourself. – Edp

@Daniel: Thanks, you're right. Learning something new every day on SO :) Haven't used the calendar module a lot (yet). Edited my answer. – Exoergic

Answer 3

import datetime, time
import random

def year_start(year):
    return time.mktime(datetime.date(year, 1, 1).timetuple())

def rand_day(year):
    stamp = random.randrange(year_start(year), year_start(year + 1))
    return datetime.date.fromtimestamp(stamp)

Edit: Ordinal dates as used in Michael Dunns answer are way better to use then timestamps! One might want to combine the use of ordinals with this though.

Kermie

Answer 4

import calendar
import datetime
import random

def generate_random_date(future=True, years=1):
    today = datetime.date.today()

    #Set the default dates
    day    = today.day
    year   = today.year
    month  = today.month

    if future:
        year  = random.randint(year, year + years)
        month = random.randint(month, 12)

        date_range = calendar.monthrange(year, month)[1] #dates possible this month
        day   = random.randint(day + 1, date_range) #1 day in the future
    else:
        year  = random.randint(year, year - years)
        month = random.randint(1, month)
        day   = random.randint(1, day - 1)

    return datetime.date(year, month, day)

Phiphenomenon

Answer 5

This is an old question, but, you can use my new library ^_^ chancepy here

from chancepy import Chance

randomDate = Chance.date(year=2020)

Kipper

Answer 6

To get a random date you can use faker

pip install faker
from faker import Faker
fake = Faker()

fake.date_between(start_date='today', end_date='+1y')

if you want from the beginning of the year then:

start_date = datetime.date(year=2023, month=1, day=1)
fake.date_between(start_date, end_date='+1y')

Radicel