Creating numpy linspace out of datetime

As far as I know, np.linspace does not support datetime objects. But perhaps we can make our own function which roughly simulates it:

def date_linspace(start, end, steps):
  delta = (end - start) / steps
  increments = range(0, steps) * np.array([delta]*steps)
  return start + increments

This should give you an np.array with dates going from start to end in steps steps (not including the end date, can be easily modified).

As of pandas 0.23 you can use date_range:

import pandas as pd
x = pd.date_range(min(dates), max(dates), periods=500).to_pydatetime()

Update - 2022

As pointed out by @Joooeey and @Ehtesh Choudhury, pandas now has date_range, which makes creating numpy.linspace-like time series much simpler.

t = pd.date_range(start='2022-03-10',
                  end='2022-03-15',
                  periods=5)

If it's important to have this time series as a numpy array, simply

>>> t.values

array(['2022-03-10T00:00:00.000000000', '2022-03-11T06:00:00.000000000',
       '2022-03-12T12:00:00.000000000', '2022-03-13T18:00:00.000000000',
       '2022-03-15T00:00:00.000000000'], dtype='datetime64[ns]')

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Original answer

Have you considered using pandas? Using an approach from this possible duplicate question, you can make use of np.linspace in the following way

import pandas as pd

start = pd.Timestamp('2015-07-01')
end = pd.Timestamp('2015-08-01')
t = np.linspace(start.value, end.value, 100)
t = pd.to_datetime(t)

To obtain an np.array of the linear timeseries

In [3]: np.asarray(t)
Out[3]: 
array(['2015-06-30T17:00:00.000000000-0700',
       '2015-07-01T00:30:54.545454592-0700',
       '2015-07-01T08:01:49.090909184-0700',
               ...
       '2015-07-31T01:58:10.909090816-0700',
       '2015-07-31T09:29:05.454545408-0700',
       '2015-07-31T17:00:00.000000000-0700'], dtype='datetime64[ns]')

import numpy # 1.15   

start = numpy.datetime64('2001-01-01')
end = numpy.datetime64('2019-01-01')

# Linspace in days:

days = numpy.linspace(start.astype('f8'), end.astype('f8'), dtype='<M8[D]')

# Linspace in milliseconds

MS1D = 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000
daytimes = numpy.linspace(start.astype('f8') * MS1D, end.astype('f8') * MS1D, dtype='<M8[ms]')