from datetime.datetime import today not working. python2.6.4 on windows

[Benjamin Kaplan]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:07 AM, Joshua Kordani <jkordani at intlogsys.com> wrote:
> Greetings all!
>
> So I'm reading through the manual and I get to the point where it talks
> about packages and how to import them.  namely section 6.4 in the tutorial.
>  I wont repeat the section here, but I want to understand whats going on in
> the following (as typed on my computer).
>
> Python 2.6.4 (r264:75708, Oct 26 2009, 08:23:19) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
> on
> win32
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> import datetime
>>>> dir(datetime)
> ['MAXYEAR', 'MINYEAR', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', 'date',
> 'datetime',
>  'datetime_CAPI', 'time', 'timedelta', 'tzinfo']
>>>> dir(datetime.datetime)
> ['__add__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__',
> '__ge
> __', '__getattribute__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__le__',
> '__lt__', '
> __ne__', '__new__', '__radd__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__',
> '__rs
> ub__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__',
> '__subclasshook__', 'a
> stimezone', 'combine', 'ctime', 'date', 'day', 'dst', 'fromordinal',
> 'fromtimest
> amp', 'hour', 'isocalendar', 'isoformat', 'isoweekday', 'max',
> 'microsecond', 'm
> in', 'minute', 'month', 'now', 'replace', 'resolution', 'second',
> 'strftime', 's
> trptime', 'time', 'timetuple', 'timetz', 'today', 'toordinal', 'tzinfo',
> 'tzname
> ', 'utcfromtimestamp', 'utcnow', 'utcoffset', 'utctimetuple', 'weekday',
> 'year']
>
>>>> from datetime.datetime import today
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> ImportError: No module named datetime
>>>>
>
> so dir on datetime shows symbols date, time, datetime,etc
> dir on datetime shows today, now, etc
>
> lets say for arguments sake that I want to just import the today function,
> according to the documentation, the line should be:
> from datetime.datetime import today.
>
> as you can see, that didn't work.  why not?
>

>>> import datetime
>>> type(datetime.datetime)
<type 'type'>

datetime.datetime is a type (so it's a class), not a module and today
is an attribute of that type. You can't import from a class.