A question about time

[John Machin]

Jan Danielsson wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
>    I have a list of servers which an application connects to. If the
> connection fails, the application should mark the server as temporarily
> unavailable, and should try to use the server again after x units of time.
> 
> In C, I would do this:
> 
> server.invalidUntil = time(NULL) + 5*60; // five minute delay
> 
> ..and the check:
> 
> if(time(NULL) > server.invalidUtil)
> {
>    // use server
> }
> 
> So the whole thing very simple... But how do I do that in Python?
> 
>    I have found datetime.datetime.now(), but I don't understand what
> "format" it returns the time in. I assume it's an object of some sort..

Everything in Python is an object. Objects can be inspected. The builtin 
function repr(obj) gives a diagnostic and often compilable 
REPResentation of the object, and str(obj) [think STRing] gives a 
"pretty" picture. Sometimes repr() and str() produce the same results. 
To understand what "format" it's in, read the documentation; in this 
case, it's found at:

http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.1/lib/datetime-datetime.html

and play around with the command-line interpreter (example below) or 
your favourite IDE.

 >>> import datetime
 >>> t1 = datetime.datetime.now(); t2 = t1 + datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)
[somewhat later]
 >>> t3 = datetime.datetime.now()
 >>> for x in t1, t2, t3: print str(x), repr(x)
...
2005-06-10 07:39:15.312000 datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 10, 7, 39, 15, 312000)
2005-06-10 07:44:15.312000 datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 10, 7, 44, 15, 312000)
2005-06-10 07:56:03.031000 datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 10, 7, 56, 3, 31000)
 >>> t3 > t2
True

> But how do I do if I want the current time as an integer (unix
> timestamp) in Python?

The Python time module would be a good starting point.