AttributeError module 'datetime' has no attribute 'now'

The error “attributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’” occurs when we try to call the now() method directly on the datetime module. In this post, we will discuss the reasons why this error occurs and different ways to solve it.

Why does this error occur?

The issue in the code sample is that we are trying to call the now() method directly on the datetime module instead of the datetime class.

How to solve the error?

There are several ways to solve this error:

• Call the now() method on the datetime class instead.

import datetime

print(datetime.datetime.now())

• Import the datetime class from the datetime module.

from datetime import datetime

print(datetime.now())

• Use an alias in your import statement.

from datetime import datetime as dt

print(dt.now())

Debugging the error attributeerror module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’

To start debugging this error, you can call the dir() function passing it the imported module. This will return a list of names of the module’s attributes.

import datetime

print(dir(datetime))

If you try to access any attribute that is not in this list, you would get the “attributeError: module has no attribute“.

In this case, we can see that the datetime module has no attribute named now, so it must be an attribute in one of the module’s classes.

Circular Import: AttributeError module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’

If you got the error “attributeError: partially initialized module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’ (most likely due to a circular import)”, there is a file called datetime.py in your local codebase. To solve the error, make sure to not use names of built-in or remote modules, e.g. datetime.py, for your local files.

Conclusion: AttributeError module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’

The error “attributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’” occurs when we try to call the now() method directly on the datetime module. To solve the error, we need to call the now() method on the datetime class instead.

In this post, we discussed the reasons why the error “attributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’” occurs, and different ways to solve it. We also looked at ways to debug this error by using the dir() function and the issue of circular import. We hope that this post helped you in resolving the “attributeError: module ‘datetime’ has no attribute ‘now’” error in your Python code.