How to get the previous month name in Python

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to get the previous month name using the current date in Python.

Python has a datetime module which helps us to deal with date object and timestamps, etc.

Getting the previous month name

To get the previous month name in Python, first we need to access the current date object using the datetime.now() method which available in datetime module.

from datetime import datetime

currentDate = datetime.now() # returns current date time

Now, we need to subtract the current month with -1 to get the previous month.

from datetime import datetime

currentDate = datetime.now()
previousMonth = currentDate.month -1 if currentDate.month > 1 else 12
print(previousMonth)

Output:

3

In the above example, we have subtracted the currentDate.month -1. where it returns the previous month in number format.

To convert it to the name format, first we need to create a months list and access it by using the square brackets [] syntax.

Here is an example:

from datetime import datetime

currentDate = datetime.now()
previousMonth = currentDate.month -1 if currentDate.month > 1 else 12
months_list = ['January','February','March','April','May','June','July','August',
'September','October','November','December']

print(months_list[previousMonth -1])

Output:

'March'

In the above code at the last line, we are subtracting the previousMonth-1 because in python lists are zero based indexing, for that we are subtracting again with minus -1.

Note: In Python lists are zero-indexed. so the first element is available at index 0 and negative indices counting back from the end of a list, so the index of -1 is used to access the last element of a list.