@Marvin I'm using datetime library in python. While running flows in Prefect 1 there were no issues. Running flows in Prefect 2 generates problem described below. datetime.datetime.now() function seems to be returning the date deployment was created instead of the current date (date the flow was run). Could you help resolve this problem? If there seem to be problems with using datetime library please suggest workaround

There appears to be no directly relevant documentation or issues regarding

datetime.datetime.now()

returning the deployment creation date in Prefect 2. However, this behavior might be due to the flow being serialized and then deserialized in such a way that the timestamp is captured at the time of deployment, not at the time of execution. Here's a workaround using Prefect's built-in utilities to ensure you get the current date and time at the moment the flow runs: You can use the

pendulum

library, which is included with Prefect, to get the current datetime. Here’s how you can ensure you're getting the current datetime at the time the flow runs:

python
import pendulum
from prefect import flow, task

@task
def display_current_datetime():
    current_datetime = pendulum.now()
    print(f"The current datetime is: {current_datetime}")

@flow
def my_flow():
    display_current_datetime()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    my_flow()

Using

pendulum.now()

ensures that the flow gets the current date and time at runtime, rather than at the time the deployment is created. You can refer to the Prefect documentation on tasks and flows here for more information.