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# 8.2. `calendar` — General calendar-related functions

Source code: Lib/calendar.py

This module allows you to output calendars like the Unix cal program, and provides additional useful functions related to the calendar. By default, these calendars have Monday as the first day of the week, and Sunday as the last (the European convention). Use `setfirstweekday()` to set the first day of the week to Sunday (6) or to any other weekday. Parameters that specify dates are given as integers. For related functionality, see also the `datetime` and `time` modules.

Most of these functions and classes rely on the `datetime` module which uses an idealized calendar, the current Gregorian calendar indefinitely extended in both directions. This matches the definition of the “proleptic Gregorian” calendar in Dershowitz and Reingold’s book “Calendrical Calculations”, where it’s the base calendar for all computations.

class `calendar.``Calendar`([firstweekday])

  Creates a `Calendar` object. firstweekday is an integer specifying the first day of the week. `0` is Monday (the default), `6` is Sunday.

  A `Calendar` object provides several methods that can be used for preparing the calendar data for formatting. This class doesn’t do any formatting itself. This is the job of subclasses.

  New in version 2.5.

  `Calendar` instances have the following methods:

  `iterweekdays`()

    Return an iterator for the week day numbers that will be used for one week. The first value from the iterator will be the same as the value of the `firstweekday` property.

  `itermonthdates`(year, month)

    Return an iterator for the month month (1-12) in the year year. This iterator will return all days (as `datetime.date` objects) for the month and all days before the start of the month or after the end of the month that are required to get a complete week.

  `itermonthdays2`(year, month)

    Return an iterator for the month month in the year year similar to `itermonthdates()`. Days returned will be tuples consisting of a day number and a week day number.

  `itermonthdays`(year, month)

    Return an iterator for the month month in the year year similar to `itermonthdates()`. Days returned will simply be day numbers.

  `monthdatescalendar`(year, month)

    Return a list of the weeks in the month month of the year as full weeks. Weeks are lists of seven `datetime.date` objects.

  `monthdays2calendar`(year, month)

    Return a list of the weeks in the month month of the year as full weeks. Weeks are lists of seven tuples of day numbers and weekday numbers.

  `monthdayscalendar`(year, month)

    Return a list of the weeks in the month month of the year as full weeks. Weeks are lists of seven day numbers.

  `yeardatescalendar`(year[, width])

    Return the data for the specified year ready for formatting. The return value is a list of month rows. Each month row contains up to width months (defaulting to 3). Each month contains between 4 and 6 weeks and each week contains 1–7 days. Days are `datetime.date` objects.

  `yeardays2calendar`(year[, width])

    Return the data for the specified year ready for formatting (similar to `yeardatescalendar()`). Entries in the week lists are tuples of day numbers and weekday numbers. Day numbers outside this month are zero.

  `yeardayscalendar`(year[, width])

    Return the data for the specified year ready for formatting (similar to `yeardatescalendar()`). Entries in the week lists are day numbers. Day numbers outside this month are zero.

class `calendar.``TextCalendar`([firstweekday])

  This class can be used to generate plain text calendars.

  New in version 2.5.

  `TextCalendar` instances have the following methods:

  `formatmonth`(theyear, themonth[, w[, l]])

    Return a month’s calendar in a multi-line string. If w is provided, it specifies the width of the date columns, which are centered. If l is given, it specifies the number of lines that each week will use. Depends on the first weekday as specified in the constructor or set by the `setfirstweekday()` method.

  `prmonth`(theyear, themonth[, w[, l]])

    Print a month’s calendar as returned by `formatmonth()`.

  `formatyear`(theyear[, w[, l[, c[, m]]]])

    Return a m-column calendar for an entire year as a multi-line string. Optional parameters w, l, and c are for date column width, lines per week, and number of spaces between month columns, respectively. Depends on the first weekday as specified in the constructor or set by the `setfirstweekday()` method. The earliest year for which a calendar can be generated is platform-dependent.

  `pryear`(theyear[, w[, l[, c[, m]]]])

    Print the calendar for an entire year as returned by `formatyear()`.

class `calendar.``HTMLCalendar`([firstweekday])

  This class can be used to generate HTML calendars.

  New in version 2.5.

  `HTMLCalendar` instances have the following methods:

  `formatmonth`(theyear, themonth[, withyear])

    Return a month’s calendar as an HTML table. If withyear is true the year will be included in the header, otherwise just the month name will be used.

  `formatyear`(theyear[, width])

    Return a year’s calendar as an HTML table. width (defaulting to 3) specifies the number of months per row.

  `formatyearpage`(theyear[, width[, css[, encoding]]])

    Return a year’s calendar as a complete HTML page. width (defaulting to 3) specifies the number of months per row. css is the name for the cascading style sheet to be used. `None` can be passed if no style sheet should be used. encoding specifies the encoding to be used for the output (defaulting to the system default encoding).

class `calendar.``LocaleTextCalendar`([firstweekday[, locale]])

  This subclass of `TextCalendar` can be passed a locale name in the constructor and will return month and weekday names in the specified locale. If this locale includes an encoding all strings containing month and weekday names will be returned as unicode.

  New in version 2.5.

class `calendar.``LocaleHTMLCalendar`([firstweekday[, locale]])

  This subclass of `HTMLCalendar` can be passed a locale name in the constructor and will return month and weekday names in the specified locale. If this locale includes an encoding all strings containing month and weekday names will be returned as unicode.

  New in version 2.5.

Note

The `formatweekday()` and `formatmonthname()` methods of these two classes temporarily change the current locale to the given locale. Because the current locale is a process-wide setting, they are not thread-safe.

For simple text calendars this module provides the following functions.

`calendar.``setfirstweekday`(weekday)

  Sets the weekday (`0` is Monday, `6` is Sunday) to start each week. The values `MONDAY`, `TUESDAY`, `WEDNESDAY`, `THURSDAY`, `FRIDAY`, `SATURDAY`, and `SUNDAY` are provided for convenience. For example, to set the first weekday to Sunday:

      import calendar
      calendar.setfirstweekday(calendar.SUNDAY)

  New in version 2.0.

`calendar.``firstweekday`()

  Returns the current setting for the weekday to start each week.

  New in version 2.0.

`calendar.``isleap`(year)

  Returns `True` if year is a leap year, otherwise `False`.

`calendar.``leapdays`(y1, y2)

  Returns the number of leap years in the range from y1 to y2 (exclusive), where y1 and y2 are years.

  Changed in version 2.0: This function didn’t work for ranges spanning a century change in Python 1.5.2.

`calendar.``weekday`(year, month, day)

  Returns the day of the week (`0` is Monday) for year (`1970`–...), month (`1`–`12`), day (`1`–`31`).

`calendar.``weekheader`(n)

  Return a header containing abbreviated weekday names. n specifies the width in characters for one weekday.

`calendar.``monthrange`(year, month)

  Returns weekday of first day of the month and number of days in month, for the specified year and month.

`calendar.``monthcalendar`(year, month)

  Returns a matrix representing a month’s calendar. Each row represents a week; days outside of the month a represented by zeros. Each week begins with Monday unless set by `setfirstweekday()`.

`calendar.``prmonth`(theyear, themonth[, w[, l]])

  Prints a month’s calendar as returned by `month()`.

`calendar.``month`(theyear, themonth[, w[, l]])

  Returns a month’s calendar in a multi-line string using the `formatmonth()` of the `TextCalendar` class.

  New in version 2.0.

`calendar.``prcal`(year[, w[, l[c]]])

  Prints the calendar for an entire year as returned by `calendar()`.

`calendar.``calendar`(year[, w[, l[c]]])

  Returns a 3-column calendar for an entire year as a multi-line string using the `formatyear()` of the `TextCalendar` class.

  New in version 2.0.

`calendar.``timegm`(tuple)

  An unrelated but handy function that takes a time tuple such as returned by the `gmtime()` function in the `time` module, and returns the corresponding Unix timestamp value, assuming an epoch of 1970, and the POSIX encoding. In fact, `time.gmtime()` and `timegm()` are each others’ inverse.

  New in version 2.0.

The `calendar` module exports the following data attributes:

`calendar.``day_name`

  An array that represents the days of the week in the current locale.

`calendar.``day_abbr`

  An array that represents the abbreviated days of the week in the current locale.

`calendar.``month_name`

  An array that represents the months of the year in the current locale. This follows normal convention of January being month number 1, so it has a length of 13 and `month_name[0]` is the empty string.

`calendar.``month_abbr`

  An array that represents the abbreviated months of the year in the current locale. This follows normal convention of January being month number 1, so it has a length of 13 and `month_abbr[0]` is the empty string.

See also

Module `datetime`
  Object-oriented interface to dates and times with similar functionality to the `time` module.
Module `time`
  Low-level time related functions.

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