Difference between two dates in Python

You can use the third-party library dateutil, which is an extension for the built-in datetime.

Parsing dates with the parser module is very straightforward:

from dateutil import parser

date1 = parser.parse('2019-08-01')
date2 = parser.parse('2019-08-20')

diff = date2 - date1

print(diff)
print(diff.days)

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^{Answer based on the one from this deleted duplicate}

Use - to get the difference between two datetime objects and take the days member.

from datetime import datetime

def days_between(d1, d2):
    d1 = datetime.strptime(d1, "%Y-%m-%d")
    d2 = datetime.strptime(d2, "%Y-%m-%d")
    return abs((d2 - d1).days)

Another short solution:

from datetime import date

def diff_dates(date1, date2):
    return abs(date2-date1).days

def main():
    d1 = date(2013,1,1)
    d2 = date(2013,9,13)
    result1 = diff_dates(d2, d1)
    print '{} days between {} and {}'.format(result1, d1, d2)
    print ("Happy programmer's day!")

main()