What I need to do
I have a timezone-unaware datetime object, to which I need to add a time zone in order to be able to compare it with other timezone-aware datetime objects. I do not want to convert my entire application to timezone unaware for this one legacy case.
What I've Tried
First, to demonstrate the problem:
Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Jun 24 2010, 21:47:49)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import datetime
>>> import pytz
>>> unaware = datetime.datetime(2011,8,15,8,15,12,0)
>>> unaware
datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12)
>>> aware = datetime.datetime(2011,8,15,8,15,12,0,pytz.UTC)
>>> aware
datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12, tzinfo=<UTC>)
>>> aware == unaware
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: can't compare offset-naive and offset-aware datetimes
First, I tried astimezone:
>>> unaware.astimezone(pytz.UTC)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: astimezone() cannot be applied to a naive datetime
>>>
It's not terribly surprising this failed, since it's actually trying to do a conversion. Replace seemed like a better choice (as per How do I get a value of datetime.today() in Python that is "timezone aware"?):
>>> unaware.replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC)
datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12, tzinfo=<UTC>)
>>> unaware == aware
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: can't compare offset-naive and offset-aware datetimes
>>>
But as you can see, replace seems to set the tzinfo, but not make the object aware. I'm getting ready to fall back to doctoring the input string to have a timezone before parsing it (I'm using dateutil for parsing, if that matters), but that seems incredibly kludgy.
Also, I've tried this in both Python 2.6 and Python 2.7, with the same results.
Context
I am writing a parser for some data files. There is an old format I need to support where the date string does not have a timezone indicator. I've already fixed the data source, but I still need to support the legacy data format. A one time conversion of the legacy data is not an option for various business BS reasons. While in general, I do not like the idea of hard-coding a default timezone, in this case it seems like the best option. I know with reasonable confidence that all the legacy data in question is in UTC, so I'm prepared to accept the risk of defaulting to that in this case.
In general, to make a naive datetime timezone-aware, use the localize method:
import datetime
import pytz
unaware = datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12, 0)
aware = datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12, 0, pytz.UTC)
now_aware = pytz.utc.localize(unaware)
assert aware == now_aware
For the UTC timezone, it is not really necessary to use localize since there is no daylight savings time calculation to handle:
now_aware = unaware.replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC)
works. (.replace returns a new datetime; it does not modify unaware.)
All of these examples use an external module, but you can achieve the same result using just the datetime module, as also presented in this SO answer:
from datetime import datetime, timezone
dt = datetime.now()
dt = dt.replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc)
print(dt.isoformat())
# '2017-01-12T22:11:31+00:00'
Fewer dependencies and no pytz issues.
NOTE: If you wish to use this with python3 and python2, you can use this as well for the timezone import (hardcoded for UTC):
try:
from datetime import timezone
utc = timezone.utc
except ImportError:
#Hi there python2 user
class UTC(tzinfo):
def utcoffset(self, dt):
return timedelta(0)
def tzname(self, dt):
return "UTC"
def dst(self, dt):
return timedelta(0)
utc = UTC()
I wrote this Python 2 script in 2011, but never checked if it works on Python 3.
I had moved from dt_aware to dt_unaware:
dt_unaware = dt_aware.replace(tzinfo=None)
and dt_unware to dt_aware:
from pytz import timezone
localtz = timezone('Europe/Lisbon')
dt_aware = localtz.localize(dt_unware)
I use this statement in Django to convert an unaware time to an aware:
from django.utils import timezone
dt_aware = timezone.make_aware(dt_unaware, timezone.get_current_timezone())
Python 3.9 adds the zoneinfo module so now only the standard library is needed!
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from datetime import datetime
unaware = datetime(2020, 10, 31, 12)
Attach a timezone:
>>> unaware.replace(tzinfo=ZoneInfo('Asia/Tokyo'))
datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 31, 12, 0, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='Asia/Tokyo'))
>>> str(_)
'2020-10-31 12:00:00+09:00'
Attach the system's local timezone:
>>> unaware.replace(tzinfo=ZoneInfo('localtime'))
datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 31, 12, 0, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='localtime'))
>>> str(_)
'2020-10-31 12:00:00+01:00'
Subsequently it is properly converted to other timezones:
>>> unaware.replace(tzinfo=ZoneInfo('localtime')).astimezone(ZoneInfo('Asia/Tokyo'))
datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 31, 20, 0, tzinfo=backports.zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='Asia/Tokyo'))
>>> str(_)
'2020-10-31 20:00:00+09:00'
Wikipedia list of available time zones
Windows has no system time zone database, so here an extra package is needed:
pip install tzdata
There is a backport to allow use of zoneinfo in Python 3.6 to 3.8:
pip install backports.zoneinfo
Then:
from backports.zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
I agree with the previous answers, and is fine if you are ok to start in UTC. But I think it is also a common scenario for people to work with a tz aware value that has a datetime that has a non UTC local timezone.
If you were to just go by name, one would probably infer replace() will be applicable and produce the right datetime aware object. This is not the case.
the replace( tzinfo=... ) seems to be random in its behaviour. It is therefore useless. Do not use this!
localize is the correct function to use. Example:
localdatetime_aware = tz.localize(datetime_nonaware)
Or a more complete example:
import pytz
from datetime import datetime
pytz.timezone('Australia/Melbourne').localize(datetime.now())
gives me a timezone aware datetime value of the current local time:
datetime.datetime(2017, 11, 3, 7, 44, 51, 908574, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Australia/Melbourne' AEDT+11:00:00 DST>)
Use dateutil.tz.tzlocal() to get the timezone in your usage of datetime.datetime.now() and datetime.datetime.astimezone():
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz
unlocalisedDatetime = datetime.now()
localisedDatetime1 = datetime.now(tz = tz.tzlocal())
localisedDatetime2 = datetime(2017, 6, 24, 12, 24, 36, tz.tzlocal())
localisedDatetime3 = unlocalisedDatetime.astimezone(tz = tz.tzlocal())
localisedDatetime4 = unlocalisedDatetime.replace(tzinfo = tz.tzlocal())
Note that datetime.astimezone will first convert your datetime object to UTC then into the timezone, which is the same as calling datetime.replace with the original timezone information being None.
This codifies #Sérgio and #unutbu's answers. It will "just work" with either a pytz.timezone object or an IANA Time Zone string.
def make_tz_aware(dt, tz='UTC', is_dst=None):
"""Add timezone information to a datetime object, only if it is naive."""
tz = dt.tzinfo or tz
try:
tz = pytz.timezone(tz)
except AttributeError:
pass
return tz.localize(dt, is_dst=is_dst)
This seems like what datetime.localize() (or .inform() or .awarify()) should do, accept both strings and timezone objects for the tz argument and default to UTC if no time zone is specified.
for those that just want to make a timezone aware datetime
import datetime
datetime.datetime(2019, 12, 7, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
for those that want a datetime with a non utc timezone starting in python 3.9 stdlib
import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
datetime.datetime(2019, 12, 7, tzinfo=ZoneInfo("America/Los_Angeles"))
Yet another way of having a datetime object NOT naive:
>>> from datetime import datetime, timezone
>>> datetime.now(timezone.utc)
datetime.datetime(2021, 5, 1, 22, 51, 16, 219942, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
quite new to Python and I encountered the same issue. I find this solution quite simple and for me it works fine (Python 3.6):
unaware=parser.parse("2020-05-01 0:00:00")
aware=unaware.replace(tzinfo=tz.tzlocal()).astimezone(tz.tzlocal())
Here is a simple solution to minimize changes to your code:
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
start_utc = datetime.utcnow()
print ("Time (UTC): %s" % start_utc.strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S"))
Time (UTC): 09-01-2021 03:49:03
tz = pytz.timezone('Africa/Cairo')
start_tz = datetime.now().astimezone(tz)
print ("Time (RSA): %s" % start_tz.strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S"))
Time (RSA): 09-01-2021 05:49:03
In the format of unutbu's answer; I made a utility module that handles things like this, with more intuitive syntax. Can be installed with pip.
import datetime
import saturn
unaware = datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 15, 8, 15, 12, 0)
now_aware = saturn.fix_naive(unaware)
now_aware_madrid = saturn.fix_naive(unaware, 'Europe/Madrid')
Changing between timezones
import pytz
from datetime import datetime
other_tz = pytz.timezone('Europe/Madrid')
# From random aware datetime...
aware_datetime = datetime.utcnow().astimezone(other_tz)
>> 2020-05-21 08:28:26.984948+02:00
# 1. Change aware datetime to UTC and remove tzinfo to obtain an unaware datetime
unaware_datetime = aware_datetime.astimezone(pytz.UTC).replace(tzinfo=None)
>> 2020-05-21 06:28:26.984948
# 2. Set tzinfo to UTC directly on an unaware datetime to obtain an utc aware datetime
aware_datetime_utc = unaware_datetime.replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC)
>> 2020-05-21 06:28:26.984948+00:00
# 3. Convert the aware utc datetime into another timezone
reconverted_aware_datetime = aware_datetime_utc.astimezone(other_tz)
>> 2020-05-21 08:28:26.984948+02:00
# Initial Aware Datetime and Reconverted Aware Datetime are equal
print(aware_datetime1 == aware_datetime2)
>> True
Above all mentioned approaches, when it is a Unix timestamp, there is a very simple solution using pandas.
import pandas as pd
unix_timestamp = 1513393355
pst_tz = pd.Timestamp(unix_timestamp, unit='s', tz='US/Pacific')
utc_tz = pd.Timestamp(unix_timestamp, unit='s', tz='UTC')
Related
I have a CSV dumpfile from a Blackberry IPD backup, created using IPDDump.
The date/time strings in here look something like this
(where EST is an Australian time-zone):
Tue Jun 22 07:46:22 EST 2010
I need to be able to parse this date in Python. At first, I tried to use the strptime() function from datettime.
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('Tue Jun 22 12:10:20 2010 EST', '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y %Z')
However, for some reason, the datetime object that comes back doesn't seem to have any tzinfo associated with it.
I did read on this page that apparently datetime.strptime silently discards tzinfo, however, I checked the documentation, and I can't find anything to that effect documented here.
Is there any way to get strptime() to play nicely with timezones?
I recommend using python-dateutil. Its parser has been able to parse every date format I've thrown at it so far.
>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> parser.parse("Tue Jun 22 07:46:22 EST 2010")
datetime.datetime(2010, 6, 22, 7, 46, 22, tzinfo=tzlocal())
>>> parser.parse("Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:18:09 -0400")
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 11, 3, 18, 9, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, -14400))
>>> parser.parse("Sun")
datetime.datetime(2011, 12, 18, 0, 0)
>>> parser.parse("10-11-08")
datetime.datetime(2008, 10, 11, 0, 0)
and so on. No dealing with strptime() format nonsense... just throw a date at it and it Does The Right Thing.
The datetime module documentation says:
Return a datetime corresponding to date_string, parsed according to format. This is equivalent to datetime(*(time.strptime(date_string, format)[0:6])).
See that [0:6]? That gets you (year, month, day, hour, minute, second). Nothing else. No mention of timezones.
Interestingly, [Win XP SP2, Python 2.6, 2.7] passing your example to time.strptime doesn't work but if you strip off the " %Z" and the " EST" it does work. Also using "UTC" or "GMT" instead of "EST" works. "PST" and "MEZ" don't work. Puzzling.
It's worth noting this has been updated as of version 3.2 and the same documentation now also states the following:
When the %z directive is provided to the strptime() method, an aware datetime object will be produced. The tzinfo of the result will be set to a timezone instance.
Note that this doesn't work with %Z, so the case is important. See the following example:
In [1]: from datetime import datetime
In [2]: start_time = datetime.strptime('2018-04-18-17-04-30-AEST','%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S-%Z')
In [3]: print("TZ NAME: {tz}".format(tz=start_time.tzname()))
TZ NAME: None
In [4]: start_time = datetime.strptime('2018-04-18-17-04-30-+1000','%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S-%z')
In [5]: print("TZ NAME: {tz}".format(tz=start_time.tzname()))
TZ NAME: UTC+10:00
Since strptime returns a datetime object which has tzinfo attribute, We can simply replace it with desired timezone.
>>> import datetime
>>> date_time_str = '2018-06-29 08:15:27.243860'
>>> date_time_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_time_str, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f').replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
>>> date_time_obj.tzname()
'UTC'
Your time string is similar to the time format in rfc 2822 (date format in email, http headers). You could parse it using only stdlib:
>>> from email.utils import parsedate_tz
>>> parsedate_tz('Tue Jun 22 07:46:22 EST 2010')
(2010, 6, 22, 7, 46, 22, 0, 1, -1, -18000)
See solutions that yield timezone-aware datetime objects for various Python versions: parsing date with timezone from an email.
In this format, EST is semantically equivalent to -0500. Though, in general, a timezone abbreviation is not enough, to identify a timezone uniquely.
Ran into this exact problem.
What I ended up doing:
# starting with date string
sdt = "20190901"
std_format = '%Y%m%d'
# create naive datetime object
from datetime import datetime
dt = datetime.strptime(sdt, sdt_format)
# extract the relevant date time items
dt_formatters = ['%Y','%m','%d']
dt_vals = tuple(map(lambda formatter: int(datetime.strftime(dt,formatter)), dt_formatters))
# set timezone
import pendulum
tz = pendulum.timezone('utc')
dt_tz = datetime(*dt_vals,tzinfo=tz)
datetime.utcnow()
This call is returning an incorrect datetime, delayed from UTC/GMT by 1 hour (check in: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.asp).
Is it working like it should be?
For example, it's returning, right now:
2015-02-17 23:58:44.761000.
Current UTC time is: 00:58, not 23:58
I know I'm five years late, but I had the same problem tonight. In my experience, the solution to the problem was to use the aware UTC datetime:
utc_dt_aware = datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc)
If you google "utcnow() wrong" this is the first result you get, so I thought it would be good to answer anyway.
datetime.utcnow() uses OS provided values.
datetime.utcnow() uses gettimeofday(2) or time.time() on Python 2 (and gmtime(3) to convert the result into broken-down time).
time.time() uses gettimeofday(2), ftime(3), time(2). Newer CPython versions may use clock_gettime(2), GetSystemTimeAsFileTime().
You could check the self-consistency as follows:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
print(datetime.utcnow())
print(datetime(1970, 1, 1) + timedelta(seconds=time.time()))
print(datetime(*time.gmtime()[:6]))
Here's (non-tested) code that calls GetSystemTimeAsFileTime() on Windows based on CPython source:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import ctypes.wintypes
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
def utcnow_microseconds():
system_time = ctypes.wintypes.FILETIME()
ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetSystemTimeAsFileTime(ctypes.byref(system_time))
large = (system_time.dwHighDateTime << 32) + system_time.dwLowDateTime
return large // 10 - 11644473600000000
print(datetime(1970, 1, 1) + timedelta(microseconds=utcnow_microseconds()))
Here's code that calls clock_gettime() on Python 2.
Problem only occurs with utc time (Python3).
e.g. System time:
$ date
Wed Jul 15 10:44:26 BST 2015
Python time correct when using datetime.now():
>>> datetime.now()
datetime.datetime(2015, 7, 15, 10, 44, 30, 775840)
...But incorrect by one hour when using datetime.utcnow():
>>> datetime.utcnow()
datetime.datetime(2015, 7, 15, 9, 44, 32, 599823)
UTC's problem is it doesn't know my timezone.
You have to tell it, with the help of a timezone module called pytz:
>>> import pytz
>>> mytz = pytz.timezone('Europe/London')
>>> pytz.utc.localize(datetime.utcnow(), is_dst=None).astimezone(mytz)
datetime.datetime(2015, 7, 15, 11, 3, 43, 688681, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Europe/London' BST+1:00:00 DST>)
References:
pytz - Converting UTC and timezone to local time
https://opensourcehacker.com/2008/06/30/relativity-of-time-shortcomings-in-python-datetime-and-workaround/
http://sweemengs-tech-world.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/get-correct-datetime-value-for-python.html
http://bugs.python.org/issue5094)
I know I am tremendously late in replying to this.
I have tried doing this recently and therefore I suggest using datetime.now() instead of datetime.utcnow(). For my simple application that works fine.
How do I convert a time to another timezone in Python?
I have found that the best approach is to convert the "moment" of interest to a utc-timezone-aware datetime object (in python, the timezone component is not required for datetime objects).
Then you can use astimezone to convert to the timezone of interest (reference).
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
utcmoment_naive = datetime.utcnow()
utcmoment = utcmoment_naive.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc)
# print "utcmoment_naive: {0}".format(utcmoment_naive) # python 2
print("utcmoment_naive: {0}".format(utcmoment_naive))
print("utcmoment: {0}".format(utcmoment))
localFormat = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
timezones = ['America/Los_Angeles', 'Europe/Madrid', 'America/Puerto_Rico']
for tz in timezones:
localDatetime = utcmoment.astimezone(pytz.timezone(tz))
print(localDatetime.strftime(localFormat))
# utcmoment_naive: 2017-05-11 17:43:30.802644
# utcmoment: 2017-05-11 17:43:30.802644+00:00
# 2017-05-11 10:43:30
# 2017-05-11 19:43:30
# 2017-05-11 13:43:30
So, with the moment of interest in the local timezone (a time that exists), you convert it to utc like this (reference).
localmoment_naive = datetime.strptime('2013-09-06 14:05:10', localFormat)
localtimezone = pytz.timezone('Australia/Adelaide')
try:
localmoment = localtimezone.localize(localmoment_naive, is_dst=None)
print("Time exists")
utcmoment = localmoment.astimezone(pytz.utc)
except pytz.exceptions.NonExistentTimeError as e:
print("NonExistentTimeError")
Using pytz
from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone
fmt = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z"
timezonelist = ['UTC','US/Pacific','Europe/Berlin']
for zone in timezonelist:
now_time = datetime.now(timezone(zone))
print now_time.strftime(fmt)
import datetime
import pytz
def convert_datetime_timezone(dt, tz1, tz2):
tz1 = pytz.timezone(tz1)
tz2 = pytz.timezone(tz2)
dt = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt,"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
dt = tz1.localize(dt)
dt = dt.astimezone(tz2)
dt = dt.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
return dt
-
dt: date time string
tz1: initial time zone
tz2: target time zone
-
> convert_datetime_timezone("2017-05-13 14:56:32", "Europe/Berlin", "PST8PDT")
'2017-05-13 05:56:32'
> convert_datetime_timezone("2017-05-13 14:56:32", "Europe/Berlin", "UTC")
'2017-05-13 12:56:32'
-
> pytz.all_timezones[0:10]
['Africa/Abidjan',
'Africa/Accra',
'Africa/Addis_Ababa',
'Africa/Algiers',
'Africa/Asmara',
'Africa/Asmera',
'Africa/Bamako',
'Africa/Bangui',
'Africa/Banjul',
'Africa/Bissau']
Python 3.9 adds the zoneinfo module so now only the the standard library is needed!
>>> from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> d = datetime(2020, 10, 31, 12, tzinfo=ZoneInfo('America/Los_Angeles'))
>>> d.astimezone(ZoneInfo('Europe/Berlin')) # 12:00 in Cali will be 20:00 in Berlin
datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 31, 20, 0, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='Europe/Berlin'))
Wikipedia list of available time zones
Some functions such as now() and utcnow() return timezone-unaware datetimes, meaning they contain no timezone information. I recommend only requesting timezone-aware values from them using the keyword tz=ZoneInfo('localtime').
If astimezone gets a timezone-unaware input, it will assume it is local time, which can lead to errors:
>>> datetime.utcnow() # UTC -- NOT timezone-aware!!
datetime.datetime(2020, 6, 1, 22, 39, 57, 376479)
>>> datetime.now() # Local time -- NOT timezone-aware!!
datetime.datetime(2020, 6, 2, 0, 39, 57, 376675)
>>> datetime.now(tz=ZoneInfo('localtime')) # timezone-aware
datetime.datetime(2020, 6, 2, 0, 39, 57, 376806, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='localtime'))
>>> datetime.now(tz=ZoneInfo('Europe/Berlin')) # timezone-aware
datetime.datetime(2020, 6, 2, 0, 39, 57, 376937, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='Europe/Berlin'))
>>> datetime.utcnow().astimezone(ZoneInfo('Europe/Berlin')) # WRONG!!
datetime.datetime(2020, 6, 1, 22, 39, 57, 377562, tzinfo=zoneinfo.ZoneInfo(key='Europe/Berlin'))
Windows has no system time zone database, so here an extra package is needed:
pip install tzdata
There is a backport to allow use in Python 3.6 to 3.8:
sudo pip install backports.zoneinfo
Then:
from backports.zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
Time conversion
To convert a time in one timezone to another timezone in Python, you could use datetime.astimezone():
so, below code is to convert the local time to other time zone.
datetime.datetime.today() - return current the local time
datetime.astimezone() - convert the time zone, but we have to pass the time zone.
pytz.timezone('Asia/Kolkata') -passing the time zone to pytz module
Strftime - Convert Datetime to string
# Time conversion from local time
import datetime
import pytz
dt_today = datetime.datetime.today() # Local time
dt_India = dt_today.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Asia/Kolkata'))
dt_London = dt_today.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/London'))
India = (dt_India.strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M'))
London = (dt_London.strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M'))
print("Indian standard time: "+India+" IST")
print("British Summer Time: "+London+" BST")
List all the time zones
import pytz
for tz in pytz.all_timezones:
print(tz)
To convert a time in one timezone to another timezone in Python, you could use datetime.astimezone():
time_in_new_timezone = time_in_old_timezone.astimezone(new_timezone)
Given aware_dt (a datetime object in some timezone), to convert it to other timezones and to print the times in a given time format:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import pytz # $ pip install pytz
time_format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z"
tzids = ['Asia/Shanghai', 'Europe/London', 'America/New_York']
for tz in map(pytz.timezone, tzids):
time_in_tz = aware_dt.astimezone(tz)
print(f"{time_in_tz:{time_format}}")
If f"" syntax is unavailable, you could replace it with "".format(**vars())
where you could set aware_dt from the current time in the local timezone:
from datetime import datetime
import tzlocal # $ pip install tzlocal
local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone()
aware_dt = datetime.now(local_timezone) # the current time
Or from the input time string in the local timezone:
naive_dt = datetime.strptime(time_string, time_format)
aware_dt = local_timezone.localize(naive_dt, is_dst=None)
where time_string could look like: '2016-11-19 02:21:42'. It corresponds to time_format = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'.
is_dst=None forces an exception if the input time string corresponds to a non-existing or ambiguous local time such as during a DST transition. You could also pass is_dst=False, is_dst=True. See links with more details at Python: How do you convert datetime/timestamp from one timezone to another timezone?
For Python timezone conversions, I use the handy table from the PyCon 2012 presentation by Taavi Burns.
Please note: The first part of this answer is or version 1.x of pendulum. See below for a version 2.x answer.
I hope I'm not too late!
The pendulum library excels at this and other date-time calculations.
>>> import pendulum
>>> some_time_zones = ['Europe/Paris', 'Europe/Moscow', 'America/Toronto', 'UTC', 'Canada/Pacific', 'Asia/Macao']
>>> heres_a_time = '1996-03-25 12:03 -0400'
>>> pendulum_time = pendulum.datetime.strptime(heres_a_time, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %z')
>>> for tz in some_time_zones:
... tz, pendulum_time.astimezone(tz)
...
('Europe/Paris', <Pendulum [1996-03-25T17:03:00+01:00]>)
('Europe/Moscow', <Pendulum [1996-03-25T19:03:00+03:00]>)
('America/Toronto', <Pendulum [1996-03-25T11:03:00-05:00]>)
('UTC', <Pendulum [1996-03-25T16:03:00+00:00]>)
('Canada/Pacific', <Pendulum [1996-03-25T08:03:00-08:00]>)
('Asia/Macao', <Pendulum [1996-03-26T00:03:00+08:00]>)
Answer lists the names of the time zones that may be used with pendulum. (They're the same as for pytz.)
For version 2:
some_time_zones is a list of the names of the time zones that might be used in a program
heres_a_time is a sample time, complete with a time zone in the form '-0400'
I begin by converting the time to a pendulum time for subsequent processing
now I can show what this time is in each of the time zones in show_time_zones
...
>>> import pendulum
>>> some_time_zones = ['Europe/Paris', 'Europe/Moscow', 'America/Toronto', 'UTC', 'Canada/Pacific', 'Asia/Macao']
>>> heres_a_time = '1996-03-25 12:03 -0400'
>>> pendulum_time = pendulum.from_format('1996-03-25 12:03 -0400', 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm ZZ')
>>> for tz in some_time_zones:
... tz, pendulum_time.in_tz(tz)
...
('Europe/Paris', DateTime(1996, 3, 25, 17, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('Europe/Paris')))
('Europe/Moscow', DateTime(1996, 3, 25, 19, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('Europe/Moscow')))
('America/Toronto', DateTime(1996, 3, 25, 11, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('America/Toronto')))
('UTC', DateTime(1996, 3, 25, 16, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('UTC')))
('Canada/Pacific', DateTime(1996, 3, 25, 8, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('Canada/Pacific')))
('Asia/Macao', DateTime(1996, 3, 26, 0, 3, 0, tzinfo=Timezone('Asia/Macao')))
For Python 3.2+ simple-date is a wrapper around pytz that tries to simplify things.
If you have a time then
SimpleDate(time).convert(tz="...")
may do what you want. But timezones are quite complex things, so it can get significantly more complicated - see the the docs.
# Program
import time
import os
os.environ['TZ'] = 'US/Eastern'
time.tzset()
print('US/Eastern in string form:',time.asctime())
os.environ['TZ'] = 'Australia/Melbourne'
time.tzset()
print('Australia/Melbourne in string form:',time.asctime())
os.environ['TZ'] = 'Asia/Kolkata'
time.tzset()
print('Asia/Kolkata in string form:',time.asctime())
How do you convert a timezone-aware datetime object to the equivalent non-timezone-aware datetime for the local timezone?
My particular application uses Django (although, this is in reality a generic Python question):
import iso8601
....
date_str="2010-10-30T17:21:12Z"
....
d = iso8601.parse_date(date_str)
foo = app.models.FooModel(the_date=d)
foo.save()
This causes Django to throw an error:
raise ValueError("MySQL backend does not support timezone-aware datetimes.")
What I need is:
d = iso8601.parse_date(date_str)
local_d = SOME_FUNCTION(d)
foo = app.models.FooModel(the_date=local_d)
What would SOME_FUNCTION be?
In general, to convert an arbitrary timezone-aware datetime to a naive (local) datetime, I'd use the pytz module and astimezone to convert to local time, and replace to make the datetime naive:
In [76]: import pytz
In [77]: est=pytz.timezone('US/Eastern')
In [78]: d.astimezone(est)
Out[78]: datetime.datetime(2010, 10, 30, 13, 21, 12, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'US/Eastern' EDT-1 day, 20:00:00 DST>)
In [79]: d.astimezone(est).replace(tzinfo=None)
Out[79]: datetime.datetime(2010, 10, 30, 13, 21, 12)
But since your particular datetime seems to be in the UTC timezone, you could do this instead:
In [65]: d
Out[65]: datetime.datetime(2010, 10, 30, 17, 21, 12, tzinfo=tzutc())
In [66]: import datetime
In [67]: import calendar
In [68]: datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(calendar.timegm(d.timetuple()))
Out[68]: datetime.datetime(2010, 10, 30, 13, 21, 12)
By the way, you might be better off storing the datetimes as naive UTC datetimes instead of naive local datetimes. That way, your data is local-time agnostic, and you only convert to local-time or any other timezone when necessary. Sort of analogous to working in unicode as much as possible, and encoding only when necessary.
So if you agree that storing the datetimes in naive UTC is the best way, then all you'd need to do is define:
local_d = d.replace(tzinfo=None)
In recent versions of Django (at least 1.4.1):
from django.utils.timezone import localtime
result = localtime(some_time_object)
A portable robust solution should use the tz database. To get local timezone as pytz tzinfo object, use tzlocal module:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import iso8601
import tzlocal # $ pip install tzlocal
local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone()
aware_dt = iso8601.parse_date("2010-10-30T17:21:12Z") # some aware datetime object
naive_local_dt = aware_dt.astimezone(local_timezone).replace(tzinfo=None)
Note: it might be tempting to use something like:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# ...
naive_local_dt = aware_dt.astimezone().replace(tzinfo=None)
but it may fail if the local timezone has a variable utc offset but python does not use a historical timezone database on a given platform.
Using python-dateutil you can parse the date in iso-8561 format with dateutil.parsrser.parse() that will give you an aware datetime in UTC/Zulu timezone.
Using .astimezone() you can convert it to an aware datetime in another timezone.
Using .replace(tzinfo=None) will convert the aware datetime into a naive datetime.
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import parser as datetime_parser
from dateutil.tz import tzutc,gettz
aware = datetime_parser.parse('2015-05-20T19:51:35.998931Z').astimezone(gettz("CET"))
naive = aware.replace(tzinfo=None)
In general the best idea is to convert all dates to UTC and store them that way, and convert them back to local as needed. I use aware.astimezone(tzutc()).replace(tzinfo=None) to make sure is in UTC and convert to naive.
I use this helper function all the time.
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
def tz_convert(t: datetime, tz=pytz.utc):
'''
Convert a timestamp to the target timezone.
If the timestamp is naive, the timezone is set to the target timezone.
'''
if not t.tzinfo:
tc = t.replace(tzinfo=tz)
else:
tc = t.astimezone(tz)
return tc
Demo
# tz-aware timestamp
>>> t = datetime.now(tz=pytz.utc)
>>> t.isoformat()
'2022-09-15T08:24:38.093312+00:00'
>>> tc = tz_convert(t, pytz.timezone('est'))
>>> tc.isoformat()
'2022-09-15T03:24:38.093312-05:00'
# tz-naive timestamp
>>> t = datetime.now()
>>> t.isoformat()
'2022-09-15T10:22:41.464200'
>>> tc = tz_convert(t, pytz.timezone('est'))
>>> tc.isoformat()
'2022-09-15T10:22:41.464200-05:00'
I want to compare UTC timestamps from a log file with local timestamps. When creating the local datetime object, I use something like:
>>> local_time=datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0,
tzinfo=pytz.timezone('Israel'))
I want to find an automatic tool that would replace thetzinfo=pytz.timezone('Israel') with the current local time zone.
Any ideas?
In Python 3.x, local timezone can be figured out like this:
>>> import datetime
>>> print(datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc).astimezone().tzinfo)
AEST
It's a tricky use of datetime's code .
For python < 3.6, you'll need
>>> import datetime
>>> print(datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(0))).astimezone().tzinfo)
AEST
Try dateutil, which has a tzlocal type that does what you need.
to compare UTC timestamps from a log file with local timestamps.
It is hard to find out Olson TZ name for a local timezone in a portable manner. Fortunately, you don't need it to perform the comparison.
tzlocal module returns a pytz timezone corresponding to the local timezone:
from datetime import datetime
import pytz # $ pip install pytz
from tzlocal import get_localzone # $ pip install tzlocal
tz = get_localzone()
local_dt = tz.localize(datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0), is_dst=None)
utc_dt = local_dt.astimezone(pytz.utc) #NOTE: utc.normalize() is unnecessary here
Unlike other solutions presented so far the above code avoids the following issues:
local time can be ambiguous i.e., a precise comparison might be impossible for some local times
utc offset can be different for the same local timezone name for dates in the past. Some libraries that support timezone-aware datetime objects (e.g., dateutil) fail to take that into account
Note: to get timezone-aware datetime object from a naive datetime object, you should use*:
local_dt = tz.localize(datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0), is_dst=None)
instead of:
#XXX fails for some timezones
local_dt = datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=tz)
*is_dst=None forces an exception if given local time is ambiguous or non-existent.
If you are certain that all local timestamps use the same (current) utc offset for the local timezone then you could perform the comparison using only stdlib:
# convert a naive datetime object that represents time in local timezone to epoch time
timestamp1 = (datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0) - datetime.fromtimestamp(0)).total_seconds()
# convert a naive datetime object that represents time in UTC to epoch time
timestamp2 = (datetime(2010, 4, 27, 9, 0) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0)).total_seconds()
timestamp1 and timestamp2 can be compared directly.
Note:
timestamp1 formula works only if the UTC offset at epoch (datetime.fromtimestamp(0)) is the same as now
fromtimestamp() creates a naive datetime object in the current local timezone
utcfromtimestamp() creates a naive datetime object in UTC.
I was asking the same to myself, and I found the answer in 1:
Take a look at section 8.1.7: the format "%z" (lowercase, the Z uppercase returns also the time zone, but not in the 4-digit format, but in the form of timezone abbreviations, like in [3]) of strftime returns the form "+/- 4DIGIT" that is standard in email headers (see section 3.3 of RFC 2822, see [2], which obsoletes the other ways of specifying the timezone for email headers).
So, if you want your timezone in this format, use:
time.strftime("%z")
[1] http://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html
[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822#section-3.3
[3] Timezone abbreviations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zone_abbreviations , only for reference.
The following appears to work for 3.7+, using standard libs:
from datetime import timedelta
from datetime import timezone
import time
def currenttz():
if time.daylight:
return timezone(timedelta(seconds=-time.altzone),time.tzname[1])
else:
return timezone(timedelta(seconds=-time.timezone),time.tzname[0])
First get pytz and tzlocal modules
pip install pytz tzlocal
then
from tzlocal import get_localzone
local = get_localzone()
then you can do things like
from datetime import datetime
print(datetime.now(local))
Here's a way to get the local timezone using only the standard library, (only works in a *nix environment):
>>> '/'.join(os.path.realpath('/etc/localtime').split('/')[-2:])
'Australia/Sydney'
You can use this to create a pytz timezone:
>>> import pytz
>>> my_tz_name = '/'.join(os.path.realpath('/etc/localtime').split('/')[-2:])
>>> my_tz = pytz.timezone(my_tz_name)
>>> my_tz
<DstTzInfo 'Australia/Sydney' LMT+10:05:00 STD>
...which you can then apply to a datetime:
>>> import datetime
>>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> now
datetime.datetime(2014, 9, 3, 9, 23, 24, 139059)
>>> now.replace(tzinfo=my_tz)
>>> now
datetime.datetime(2014, 9, 3, 9, 23, 24, 139059, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Australia/Sydney' LMT+10:05:00 STD>)
Here's a slightly more concise version of #vbem's solution:
from datetime import datetime as dt
dt.utcnow().astimezone().tzinfo
The only substantive difference is that I replaced datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc) with datetime.datetime.utcnow(). For brevity, I also aliased datetime.datetime as dt.
For my purposes, I want the UTC offset in seconds. Here's what that looks like:
dt.utcnow().astimezone().utcoffset().total_seconds()
Avoiding non-standard module (seems to be a missing method of datetime module):
from datetime import datetime
utcOffset_min = int(round((datetime.now() - datetime.utcnow()).total_seconds())) / 60 # round for taking time twice
utcOffset_h = utcOffset_min / 60
assert(utcOffset_min == utcOffset_h * 60) # we do not handle 1/2 h timezone offsets
print 'Local time offset is %i h to UTC.' % (utcOffset_h)
To create an ISO formatted string that includes the ISO representation of your local time zone in Israel (+04:00) :
on a server in Israel:
>>> datetime.now(datetime.now().astimezone().tzinfo).isoformat()
'2021-09-07T01:02.030042+04:00'
This will create a "timezone aware" date object that will compare to any other datetime object in UTC or local time appropriately. But the time zone ISO representation (and the date/time string itself) will change if you ran this on a server in San Francisco at the exact same time, as I did:
on a server in San Francisco, CA, USA (Pacific):
>>> datetime.now(datetime.now().astimezone().tzinfo).isoformat()
'2021-09-06T14:01:02.030042-07:00'
The datetime objects in in both cases would be compatible with each other. So if you subtracted them you'd get a time delta of 0:
On a server anywhere in Python3.6+:
>>> (datetime.fromisoformat('2021-09-06T14:01:02.030042-07:00') -
... datetime.fromisoformat('2021-09-07T01:01:02.030042+04:00'))
datetime.timedelta(0)
Based on Thoku's answer above, here's an answer that resolves the time zone to the nearest half hour (which is relevant for some timezones eg South Australia's) :
from datetime import datetime
round((round((datetime.now()-datetime.utcnow()).total_seconds())/1800)/2)
Based on J. F. Sebastian's answer, you can do this with the standard library:
import time, datetime
local_timezone = datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(seconds=-time.timezone))
Tested in 3.4, should work on 3.4+
You may be happy with pendulum
>>> pendulum.datetime(2015, 2, 5, tz='local').timezone.name
'Israel'
Pendulum has a well designed API for manipulating dates. Everything is TZ-aware.
I have also been looking for a simple way to read the local host configuration and get timezone aware local_time based on it. As of python 3.6+ the simplest approach is use dateutil.tz which will read /etc/localtime and assist in getting timezone aware datetime object.
Here is more info on it: https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/tz.html
The implementation to accomplish what you're looking for is as follows:
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz
local_time = datetime.now(tz.gettz())
This will provide you the following local_time:
2019-10-18 13:41:06.624536-05:00
Additional Resources I used in researching this topic:
Paul Ganssle Presentation about time zones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4UCKCo9FWY
pytz: The Fastest Footgun in the West
https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2018/03/pytz-fastest-footgun.html
I want to compare UTC timestamps from a log file with local timestamps
If this is your intent, then I wouldn't worry about specifying specific tzinfo parameters or any additional external libraries. Since Python 3.5, the built in datetime module is all you need to create a UTC and a local timestamp automatically.
import datetime
f = "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y" # Full format with timezone
# tzinfo=None
cdatetime = datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0) # 1. Your example from log
cdatetime = datetime.datetime.now() # 2. Basic date creation (default: local time)
print(cdatetime.strftime(f)) # no timezone printed
# Tue Apr 27 12:00:00 2010
utctimestamp = cdatetime.astimezone(tz=datetime.timezone.utc) # 1. convert to UTC
utctimestamp = datetime.datetime.now(tz=datetime.timezone.utc) # 2. create in UTC
print(utctimestamp.strftime(f))
# Tue Apr 27 17:00:00 UTC 2010
localtimestamp = cdatetime.astimezone() # 1. convert to local [default]
localtimestamp = datetime.datetime.now().astimezone() # 2. create with local timezone
print(localtimestamp.strftime(f))
# Tue Apr 27 12:00:00 CDT 2010
The '%Z' parameter of datetime.strftime() prints the timezone acronym into the timestamp for humans to read.
For simple things, the following tzinfo implementation can be used, which queries the OS for time zone offsets:
import datetime
import time
class LocalTZ(datetime.tzinfo):
_unixEpochOrdinal = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0).toordinal()
def dst(self, dt):
return datetime.timedelta(0)
def utcoffset(self, dt):
t = (dt.toordinal() - self._unixEpochOrdinal)*86400 + dt.hour*3600 + dt.minute*60 + dt.second + time.timezone
utc = datetime.datetime(*time.gmtime(t)[:6])
local = datetime.datetime(*time.localtime(t)[:6])
return local - utc
print datetime.datetime.now(LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
# If you're in the EU, the following datetimes are right on the DST change.
print datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 31, 0, 59, 59, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 31, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 31, 1, 59, 59, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
# The following datetime is invalid, as the clock moves directly from
# 01:59:59 standard time to 03:00:00 daylight savings time.
print datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 31, 2, 0, 0, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2013, 10, 27, 0, 59, 59, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2013, 10, 27, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
print datetime.datetime(2013, 10, 27, 1, 59, 59, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
# The following datetime is ambigous, as 02:00 can be either DST or standard
# time. (It is interpreted as standard time.)
print datetime.datetime(2013, 10, 27, 2, 0, 0, tzinfo=LocalTZ())
tzlocal from dateutil.
Code example follows. Last string suitable for use in filenames.
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> from dateutil.tz import tzlocal
>>> str(datetime.now(tzlocal()))
'2015-04-01 11:19:47.980883-07:00'
>>> str(datetime.now(tzlocal())).replace(' ','-').replace(':','').replace('.','-')
'2015-04-01-111947-981879-0700'
>>>
First, note that the question presents an incorrect initialization of an aware datetime object:
>>> local_time=datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12, 0, 0, 0,
... tzinfo=pytz.timezone('Israel'))
creates an invalid instance. One can see the problem by computing the UTC offset of the resulting object:
>>> print(local_time.utcoffset())
2:21:00
(Note the result which is an odd fraction of an hour.)
To initialize an aware datetime properly using pytz one should use the localize() method as follows:
>>> local_time=pytz.timezone('Israel').localize(datetime.datetime(2010, 4, 27, 12))
>>> print(local_time.utcoffset())
3:00:00
Now, if you require a local pytz timezone as the new tzinfo, you should use the tzlocal package as others have explained, but if all you need is an instance with a correct local time zone offset and abbreviation then tarting with Python 3.3, you can call the astimezone() method with no arguments to convert an aware datetime instance to your local timezone:
>>> local_time.astimezone().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %Z %z')
'2010-04-27 05:00 EDT -0400'
now_dt = datetime.datetime.now()
utc_now = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
now_ts, utc_ts = map(time.mktime, map(datetime.datetime.timetuple, (now_dt, utc_now)))
offset = int((now_ts - utc_ts) / 3600)
hope this will help you.