I'm using this inside a Django view. I copied this exactly: http://www.pythonexamples.org/2010/12/23/how-to-get-todays-date-in-python/

That is:

import datetime
variable = datetime.date.today()

I also tried

from datetime import datetime
variable = datetime.date.today()

But then this error occurs:

'method_descriptor' object has no attribute 'today'

You asked about why this thing happens... so here goes my try and my first ever answer in stack overflow.

It seems like a scope/namespace issue to me.

Check today() 's scope. Is it accessible from where you refer to it?

Check also this guy: http://igotgenes.blogspot.gr/2009/01/class-attributes-and-scoping-in-python.html

And this: https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/classes.html

in order to understand deeper the reason it might happened.

Sorry but can't help more, since I don't have your whole project at my disposal :(

Edit: Just a few typos.