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# Current date and time

**In this article, you will learn to get today's date and current date and time in Python. We will also format the date and time in different formats using strftime() method.**

There are a number of ways you can take to get the current date. We will use the `date` class of the [datetime](https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/datetime) module to accomplish this task.

### Example 1: Python get today's date

```
from datetime import date

today = date.today()
print("Today's date:", today)
```

Here, we imported the `date` class from the `datetime` module. Then, we used the `date.today()` method to get the current local date.

By the way, `date.today()` returns a `date` object, which is assigned to the today variable in the above program. Now, you can use the [strftime()](https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/datetime/strftime) method to create a string representing date in different formats.

### Example 2: Current date in different formats

```
from datetime import date

today = date.today()

# dd/mm/YY
d1 = today.strftime("%d/%m/%Y")
print("d1 =", d1)

# Textual month, day and year	
d2 = today.strftime("%B %d, %Y")
print("d2 =", d2)

# mm/dd/y
d3 = today.strftime("%m/%d/%y")
print("d3 =", d3)

# Month abbreviation, day and year	
d4 = today.strftime("%b-%d-%Y")
print("d4 =", d4)
```

When you run the program, the output will be something like:

```
d1 = 16/09/2019
d2 = September 16, 2019
d3 = 09/16/19
d4 = Sep-16-2019
```

If you need to get the current date and time, you can use `datetime` class of the `datetime` module.

### Example 3: Get the current date and time

```
from datetime import datetime

# datetime object containing current date and time
now = datetime.now()
 
print("now =", now)

# dd/mm/YY H:M:S
dt_string = now.strftime("%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")
print("date and time =", dt_string)	
```

Here, we have used `datetime.now()` to get the current date and time. Then, we used `strftime()` to create a string representing date and time in another format.


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