I am dealing with dates in Python and I need to convert them to UTC timestamps to be used inside Javascript. The following code does not work:
>>> d = datetime.date(2011,01,01) >>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(time.mktime(d.timetuple())) datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 31, 23, 0) Converting the date object first to datetime also does not help. I tried the example at this link from, but:
from pytz import utc, timezone from datetime import datetime from time import mktime input_date = datetime(year=2011, month=1, day=15) and now either:
mktime(utc.localize(input_date).utctimetuple()) or
mktime(timezone('US/Eastern').localize(input_date).utctimetuple()) does work.
So general question: how can I get a date converted to seconds since epoch according to UTC?
511 Answers
If d = date(2011, 1, 1) is in UTC:
>>> from datetime import datetime, date >>> import calendar >>> timestamp1 = calendar.timegm(d.timetuple()) >>> datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp1) datetime.datetime(2011, 1, 1, 0, 0) If d is in local timezone:
>>> import time >>> timestamp2 = time.mktime(d.timetuple()) # DO NOT USE IT WITH UTC DATE >>> datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp2) datetime.datetime(2011, 1, 1, 0, 0) timestamp1 and timestamp2 may differ if midnight in the local timezone is not the same time instance as midnight in UTC.
mktime() may return a wrong result if d corresponds to an ambiguous local time (e.g., during DST transition) or if d is a past(future) date when the utc offset might have been different and the C mktime() has no access to the tz database on the given platform. You could use pytz module (e.g., via tzlocal.get_localzone()) to get access to the tz database on all platforms. Also, utcfromtimestamp() may fail and mktime() may return non-POSIX timestamp if "right" timezone is used.
To convert datetime.date object that represents date in UTC without calendar.timegm():
DAY = 24*60*60 # POSIX day in seconds (exact value) timestamp = (utc_date.toordinal() - date(1970, 1, 1).toordinal()) * DAY timestamp = (utc_date - date(1970, 1, 1)).days * DAY How can I get a date converted to seconds since epoch according to UTC?
To convert datetime.datetime (not datetime.date) object that already represents time in UTC to the corresponding POSIX timestamp (a float).
Python 3.3+
from datetime import timezone timestamp = dt.replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc).timestamp() Note: It is necessary to supply timezone.utc explicitly otherwise .timestamp() assume that your naive datetime object is in local timezone.
Python 3 (< 3.3)
From the docs for datetime.utcfromtimestamp():
There is no method to obtain the timestamp from a datetime instance, but POSIX timestamp corresponding to a datetime instance dt can be easily calculated as follows. For a naive dt:
timestamp = (dt - datetime(1970, 1, 1)) / timedelta(seconds=1) And for an aware dt:
timestamp = (dt - datetime(1970,1,1, tzinfo=timezone.utc)) / timedelta(seconds=1) Interesting read: Epoch time vs. time of day on the difference between What time is it? and How many seconds have elapsed?
See also: datetime needs an "epoch" method
Python 2
To adapt the above code for Python 2:
timestamp = (dt - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds() where timedelta.total_seconds() is equivalent to (td.microseconds + (td.seconds + td.days * 24 * 3600) * 10**6) / 10**6 computed with true division enabled.
Example
from __future__ import division from datetime import datetime, timedelta def totimestamp(dt, epoch=datetime(1970,1,1)): td = dt - epoch # return td.total_seconds() return (td.microseconds + (td.seconds + td.days * 86400) * 10**6) / 10**6 now = datetime.utcnow() print now print totimestamp(now) Beware of floating-point issues.
Output
2012-01-08 15:34:10.022403 1326036850.02 How to convert an aware datetime object to POSIX timestamp
assert dt.tzinfo is not None and dt.utcoffset() is not None timestamp = dt.timestamp() # Python 3.3+ On Python 3:
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone epoch = datetime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=timezone.utc) timestamp = (dt - epoch) / timedelta(seconds=1) integer_timestamp = (dt - epoch) // timedelta(seconds=1) On Python 2:
# utc time = local time - utc offset utc_naive = dt.replace(tzinfo=None) - dt.utcoffset() timestamp = (utc_naive - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds() For unix systems only:
>>> import datetime >>> d = datetime.date(2011, 1, 1) >>> d.strftime("%s") # <-- THIS IS THE CODE YOU WANT '1293832800' Note 1: dizzyf observed that this applies localized timezones. Don't use in production.
Note 2: Jakub Narębski noted that this ignores timezone information even for offset-aware datetime (tested for Python 2.7).
9Assumption 1: You're attempting to convert a date to a timestamp, however since a date covers a 24 hour period, there isn't a single timestamp that represents that date. I'll assume that you want to represent the timestamp of that date at midnight (00:00:00.000).
Assumption 2: The date you present is not associated with a particular time zone, however you want to determine the offset from a particular time zone (UTC). Without knowing the time zone the date is in, it isn't possible to calculate a timestamp for a specific time zone. I'll assume that you want to treat the date as if it is in the local system time zone.
First, you can convert the date instance into a tuple representing the various time components using the timetuple() member:
dtt = d.timetuple() # time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=-1) You can then convert that into a timestamp using time.mktime:
ts = time.mktime(dtt) # 1293868800.0 You can verify this method by testing it with the epoch time itself (1970-01-01), in which case the function should return the timezone offset for the local time zone on that date:
d = datetime.date(1970,1,1) dtt = d.timetuple() # time.struct_time(tm_year=1970, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=-1) ts = time.mktime(dtt) # 28800.0 28800.0 is 8 hours, which would be correct for the Pacific time zone (where I'm at).
I defined my own two functions
- utc_time2datetime(utc_time, tz=None)
- datetime2utc_time(datetime)
here:
import time import datetime from pytz import timezone import calendar import pytz def utc_time2datetime(utc_time, tz=None): # convert utc time to utc datetime utc_datetime = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(utc_time) # add time zone to utc datetime if tz is None: tz_datetime = utc_datetime.astimezone(timezone('utc')) else: tz_datetime = utc_datetime.astimezone(tz) return tz_datetime def datetime2utc_time(datetime): # add utc time zone if no time zone is set if datetime.tzinfo is None: datetime = datetime.replace(tzinfo=timezone('utc')) # convert to utc time zone from whatever time zone the datetime is set to utc_datetime = datetime.astimezone(timezone('utc')).replace(tzinfo=None) # create a time tuple from datetime utc_timetuple = utc_datetime.timetuple() # create a time element from the tuple an add microseconds utc_time = calendar.timegm(utc_timetuple) + datetime.microsecond / 1E6 return utc_time follow the python2.7 document, you have to use calendar.timegm() instead of time.mktime()
>>> d = datetime.date(2011,01,01) >>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(calendar.timegm(d.timetuple())) datetime.datetime(2011, 1, 1, 0, 0) A complete time-string contains:
- date
- time
- utcoffset
[+HHMM or -HHMM]
For example:
1970-01-01 06:00:00 +0500 == 1970-01-01 01:00:00 +0000 == UNIX timestamp:3600
$ python3 >>> from datetime import datetime >>> from calendar import timegm >>> tm = '1970-01-01 06:00:00 +0500' >>> fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z' >>> timegm(datetime.strptime(tm, fmt).utctimetuple()) 3600 Note:
UNIX timestampis a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch, in UTC.
Edit:
$ python3 >>> from datetime import datetime, timezone, timedelta >>> from calendar import timegm >>> dt = datetime(1970, 1, 1, 6, 0) >>> tz = timezone(timedelta(hours=5)) >>> timegm(dt.replace(tzinfo=tz).utctimetuple()) 3600 Using the arrow package:
>>> import arrow >>> arrow.get(2010, 12, 31).timestamp 1293753600 >>> time.gmtime(1293753600) time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=365, tm_isdst=0) the question is a little confused. timestamps are not UTC - they're a Unix thing. the date might be UTC? assuming it is, and if you're using Python 3.2+, simple-date makes this trivial:
>>> SimpleDate(date(2011,1,1), tz='utc').timestamp 1293840000.0 if you actually have the year, month and day you don't need to create the date:
>>> SimpleDate(2011,1,1, tz='utc').timestamp 1293840000.0 and if the date is in some other timezone (this matters because we're assuming midnight without an associated time):
>>> SimpleDate(date(2011,1,1), tz='America/New_York').timestamp 1293858000.0 [the idea behind simple-date is to collect all python's date and time stuff in one consistent class, so you can do any conversion. so, for example, it will also go the other way:
>>> SimpleDate(1293858000, tz='utc').date datetime.date(2011, 1, 1) ]
2Considering you have a datetime object called d, use the following to get the timestamp in UTC:
d.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ") And for the opposite direction, use following :
d = datetime.strptime("2008-09-03T20:56:35.450686Z", "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ") i'm impressed of the deep discussion.
my 2 cents:
from datetime import datetime import time the timestamp in utc is:
timestamp = \ (datetime.utcnow() - datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds() or,
timestamp = time.time() if now results from datetime.now(), in the same DST
utcoffset = (datetime.now() - datetime.utcnow()).total_seconds() timestamp = \ (now - datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds() - utcoffset This works for me, pass through a function.
from datetime import timezone, datetime, timedelta import datetime def utc_converter(dt): dt = datetime.datetime.now(timezone.utc) utc_time = dt.replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc) utc_timestamp = utc_time.timestamp() return utc_timestamp # create start and end timestamps _now = datetime.datetime.now() str_start = str(utc_converter(_now)) _end = _now + timedelta(seconds=10) str_end = str(utc_converter(_end)) 
