humanize

This modest package contains various common humanization utilities, like turning a number into a fuzzy human-readable duration ("3 minutes ago") or into a human-readable size or throughput. It is localized to:

• Arabic
• Basque
• Bengali
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Catalan
• Danish
• Dutch
• Esperanto
• European Portuguese
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Klingon
• Korean
• Latvian
• Norwegian
• Persian
• Polish
• Russian
• Simplified Chinese
• Sinhala
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian
• Uzbek
• Vietnamese

API reference

https://humanize.readthedocs.io

Installation

From PyPI

python3 -m pip install --upgrade humanize

Note: the PyPI humanize package is the upstream release and does not include this fork's fixes. To use the fork, install from source.

From source

git clone https://github.com/talonwr/humanize
cd humanize
python3 -m pip install -e .

Testing

The test suite runs on a source checkout. Install the test extras, then run pytest (use --benchmark-disable to skip the noisy benchmark table; note that -p no:benchmark breaks the benchmark tests instead):

python3 -m pip install -e ".[tests]"
python3 -m pytest --benchmark-disable

Note: in zsh (the default macOS shell) the extras must be quoted — unquoted, .[tests] fails with no matches found.

Localization tests are skipped unless the compiled translation catalogs exist. Generate them first (run from the repository root; requires gettext's msgfmt on PATH — install with brew install gettext on macOS or apt install gettext on Debian/Ubuntu; note the Homebrew formula may not add msgfmt to PATH by itself):

scripts/generate-translation-binaries.sh

Without the catalogs a run looks green but is not full coverage: expect 764 passed / 110 skipped. With the catalogs generated, expect 874 passed.

Usage

Integer humanization

>>> import humanize
>>> humanize.intcomma(12345)
'12,345'
>>> humanize.intword(123455913)
'123.5 million'
>>> humanize.intword(12345591313)
'12.3 billion'
>>> humanize.apnumber(4)
'four'
>>> humanize.apnumber(41)
'41'

Date & time humanization

>>> import humanize
>>> import datetime as dt
>>> humanize.naturalday(dt.datetime.now())
'today'
>>> humanize.naturaldelta(dt.timedelta(seconds=1001))
'17 minutes'
>>> humanize.naturalday(dt.datetime.now() - dt.timedelta(days=1))
'yesterday'
>>> humanize.naturalday(dt.date(2007, 6, 5))
'Jun 05'
>>> humanize.naturaldate(dt.date(2007, 6, 5))
'Jun 05 2007'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(dt.datetime.now() - dt.timedelta(seconds=1))
'a second ago'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(dt.datetime.now() - dt.timedelta(seconds=3600))
'an hour ago'

Precise time delta

>>> import humanize
>>> import datetime as dt
>>> delta = dt.timedelta(seconds=3633, days=2, microseconds=123000)
>>> humanize.precisedelta(delta)
'2 days, 1 hour and 33.12 seconds'
>>> humanize.precisedelta(delta, minimum_unit="microseconds")
'2 days, 1 hour, 33 seconds and 123 milliseconds'
>>> humanize.precisedelta(delta, suppress=["days"], format="%0.4f")
'49 hours and 33.1230 seconds'

Smaller units

If seconds are too large, set minimum_unit to milliseconds or microseconds:

>>> import humanize
>>> import datetime as dt
>>> humanize.naturaldelta(dt.timedelta(seconds=2))
'2 seconds'

>>> delta = dt.timedelta(milliseconds=4)
>>> humanize.naturaldelta(delta)
'a moment'
>>> humanize.naturaldelta(delta, minimum_unit="milliseconds")
'4 milliseconds'
>>> humanize.naturaldelta(delta, minimum_unit="microseconds")
'4 milliseconds'

>>> humanize.naturaltime(delta)
'now'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(delta, minimum_unit="milliseconds")
'4 milliseconds ago'
>>> humanize.naturaltime(delta, minimum_unit="microseconds")
'4 milliseconds ago'

File size humanization

>>> import humanize
>>> humanize.naturalsize(1_000_000)
'1.0 MB'
>>> humanize.naturalsize(1_000_000, binary=True)
'976.6 KiB'
>>> humanize.naturalsize(1_000_000, gnu=True)
'976.6K'

Human-readable floating point numbers

>>> import humanize
>>> humanize.fractional(1/3)
'1/3'
>>> humanize.fractional(1.5)
'1 1/2'
>>> humanize.fractional(0.3)
'3/10'
>>> humanize.fractional(0.333)
'333/1000'
>>> humanize.fractional(1)
'1'

Scientific notation

>>> import humanize
>>> humanize.scientific(0.3)
'3.00 x 10⁻¹'
>>> humanize.scientific(500)
'5.00 x 10²'
>>> humanize.scientific("20000")
'2.00 x 10⁴'
>>> humanize.scientific(1**10)
'1.00 x 10⁰'
>>> humanize.scientific(1**10, precision=1)
'1.0 x 10⁰'
>>> humanize.scientific(1**10, precision=0)
'1 x 10⁰'

Localization

Note: a source checkout ships only .po translation sources; the compiled .mo catalogs that i18n.activate() needs are not committed (the PyPI wheel does ship compiled .mo catalogs). On a fresh clone, generate them first, from the repository root (requires gettext's msgfmt on PATH — brew install gettext on macOS, apt install gettext on Debian/Ubuntu):

scripts/generate-translation-binaries.sh

Without this, activate() raises FileNotFoundError: No translation file found for domain: 'humanize'.

How to change locale at runtime:

>>> import humanize
>>> import datetime as dt
>>> humanize.naturaltime(dt.timedelta(seconds=3))
'3 seconds ago'
>>> _t = humanize.i18n.activate("ru_RU")
>>> humanize.naturaltime(dt.timedelta(seconds=3))
'3 секунды назад'
>>> humanize.i18n.deactivate()
>>> humanize.naturaltime(dt.timedelta(seconds=3))
'3 seconds ago'

You can pass additional parameter path to activate to specify a path to search locales in.

>>> import humanize
>>> humanize.i18n.activate("xx_XX")
<...>
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No translation file found for domain: 'humanize'
>>> humanize.i18n.activate("pt_BR", path="path/to/my/own/translation/")
<gettext.GNUTranslations instance ...>

How to add new phrases to existing locale files:

scripts/update-translations.sh

This extracts new phrases from the source code into humanize.pot, merges them into each locale's .po file and compiles the binary .mo catalogs.

How to add a new locale (run from the repository root; humanize.pot is created at the root by scripts/update-translations.sh):

msginit -i humanize.pot -o src/humanize/locale/<locale name>/LC_MESSAGES/humanize.po --locale <locale name>

Where <locale name> is a locale abbreviation, eg. en_GB, pt_BR or just ru, fr etc.

List the language at the top of this README.