arrow-py/arrow

★ 9,042PythonAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((arrow))
    What It Does
      Date and time handling
      Simpler than stdlib
    Features
      Timezone conversion
      Human readable output
      ISO 8601 support
      Date shifting
    Tech Stack
      Python
    Use Cases
      APIs and web apps
      Date arithmetic
      Multilingual apps

mindmap root((arrow)) What It Does Date and time handling Simpler than stdlib Features Timezone conversion Human readable output ISO 8601 support Date shifting Tech Stack Python Use Cases APIs and web apps Date arithmetic Multilingual apps

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Convert timestamps between timezones in one line of code instead of writing boilerplate with multiple imports.

USE CASE 2

Turn a date into a human-readable phrase like '3 hours ago' or 'in 2 days' for display in a web app, in many languages.

USE CASE 3

Parse and generate ISO 8601 date strings when building APIs that exchange date data with other systems.

USE CASE 4

Shift a date forward or backward by days, weeks, or months without doing manual date arithmetic.

Tech stack

Python

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

License not specified in the explanation.

In plain English

Arrow is a Python library for working with dates and times in a simpler, cleaner way than Python's built-in tools allow. If you have ever written Python code that deals with dates or times and found yourself importing multiple modules and writing more code than felt necessary, Arrow is designed to fix that. Python's standard library for handling dates involves several separate modules and several different types of objects, which can be confusing and verbose, especially when you need to work with timezones or convert between formats. Arrow replaces most of that with a single object and a cleaner way of doing common tasks. With Arrow you can get the current time in any timezone with one line, shift a date forward or backward by hours, days, weeks, or months using a simple method, convert between timezones without boilerplate, and format or parse date strings without memorizing format codes. There is also a feature called humanize that turns a timestamp into a plain phrase like "an hour ago" or "in 3 days," and it supports many languages. Installing Arrow is one command: pip install arrow. Once installed, you import a single module called arrow and use it to create, read, and manipulate dates. The library is fully compatible with Python's existing datetime type, so you can use it alongside code that already exists. Arrow supports the ISO 8601 standard, which is the international format for writing dates and times. It can parse and generate ISO 8601 strings automatically, which matters if you are building apps that exchange data with APIs or other systems. The project is open source, actively maintained, and accepts community contributions including support for additional languages in the humanize feature.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Using the arrow library, write a Python function that takes a UTC timestamp string and converts it to a human-readable phrase like '2 hours ago' in both English and Spanish.

Prompt 2

Write a Python script using arrow that reads a list of ISO 8601 date strings from an API response, converts them all to the user's local timezone, and sorts them from newest to oldest.

Prompt 3

Replace all the datetime.datetime.now(), timedelta, and pytz calls in this Python file with arrow equivalents to simplify the timezone handling code.

Prompt 4

Using arrow, build a Python function that calculates a deadline 30 days from today and formats it as a human-readable date string in the user's locale.

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