Subtracting two objects datetime.datetime, you get timedeltaan object that has (added in Python 2.7). Divide this by 60 and type to get minutes from your original date: .total_seconds()int()
import datetime
january1st = datetime.datetime(2012, 01, 01)
timesince = datetime.datetime.now() - january1st
minutessince = int(timesince.total_seconds() / 60)
or in python shell:
>>> import datetime
>>> january1st = datetime.datetime(2012, 01, 01)
>>> timesince = datetime.datetime.now() - january1st
>>> minutessince = int(timesince.total_seconds() / 60)
>>> minutessince
346208
python 2.6 .days .seconds :
minutessince = timesince.days * 1440 + timesince.seconds // 60
.