How to access a date element in JSON? - json

Question

I have this API Endpoint setup on Lambda where my applications talk to and get the data it needs.
Problem am running across right now is trying to access an element that is based on the day before today's date.
Language: Python 3.7
Service: AWS Lambda
Provider: WeatherStack
Example: https://weatherstack.com/documentation -> API Features
-> Weather Forecast
In order to access this element from the API provider; I have to basically setup a JSON structure that goes like this:
"forecast": {
"2020-04-04": {
"date": "2020-04-04",
"date_epoch": 1585958400,
"astro": {
"sunrise": "06:42 AM",
"sunset": "07:31 PM",
"moonrise": "03:26 PM",
"moonset": "04:56 AM",
"moon_phase": "Waxing Gibbous",
"moon_illumination": 79
},
"mintemp": 46,
"maxtemp": 54,
"avgtemp": 50,
"totalsnow": 0,
"sunhour": 7.7,
"uv_index": 2
}
}
Now the problem here is the "2020-04-04" date; as I can't access it simply by calling api_endpoint['forecast'][0] as it will throw an error. I checked using Lens however and did find that it does have one element in 'forecast' which is of course the 2020-04-04 that I'm having trouble trying to access.
I don't know if there's a way to dynamically set the element to be called based on yesterday's date since the api provider will change the forecast date element daily.
I've tried api_endpoint['forecast'][datetime.now()] and got an error.
Is there a way to set the [] after ['forecast] dynamically via variable so that i can always call it based on api_endpoint['forecast'][yesterdaysdate]?
Solution:
from datetime import timedelta, datetime
ts = time.gmtime()
todaysdate = (time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d", ts))
yesterday_date = (datetime.datetime.utcnow() - timedelta(1)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
data = api_response['forecast'][yesterday_date]

Answer 1

If I understand corectly, you want to call the data inside the api_endpoint['forecast'][yesterday_date].
If so, this can be achieved by this:
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
yesterday_date = (datetime.now() - timedelta(1)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
# call to api
api_endpoint['forecast'][yesterday_date]
If you want to days ago, change timedelta(2) and so on.
Today variable can be assigned by this:
current_date = datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
api_endpoint['forecast'][current_date]
If none of the above solutions answer to your question, leave a comment.