Python Datetime : use strftime() with a timezone-aware date

Question

Suppose I have date d like this :

>>> d 
datetime(2009, 4, 19, 21, 12, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, -7200))

As you can see, it is "timezone aware", there is an offset of 2 Hour, utctime is

>>> d.utctimetuple() 
time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, 
                 tm_hour=23, tm_min=12, tm_sec=0, 
                 tm_wday=6, tm_yday=109, tm_isdst=0)

So, real UTC date is 19th March 2009 23:12:00, right ?

Now I need to format my date in string, I use

>>> d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f') 
'2009-04-19 21:12:00.000000'

Which doesn't seems to take this offset into account. How to fix that ?

score 45 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '19 at 06:13

45

In addition to what @Slam has already answered:

If you want to output the UTC time without any offset, you can do

from datetime import timezone, datetime, timedelta
d = datetime(2009, 4, 19, 21, 12, tzinfo=timezone(timedelta(hours=-2)))
d.astimezone(timezone.utc).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')

See datetime.astimezone in the Python docs.

edited Jun 20 '19 at 06:13

rjdkolb

10,377
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answered Feb 10 '18 at 20:01

dnswlt

2,925
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How can it be done in Python 2.7? no `timezone` module there – Itamar Katz May 21 '19 at 09:16
@itamar Katz please please don't use Python 2.7 – Michael Currie Aug 12 '23 at 09:42
1

@MichaelCurrie it's been more then 4 years, I'm not using 2.7 anymore... – Itamar Katz Aug 24 '23 at 16:39
Excellent! However, my comment would have also applied in 2019 :D – Michael Currie Aug 25 '23 at 12:24

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 10 '18 at 19:52

16

The reason is python actually formatting your datetime object, not some "UTC at this point of time"

To show timezone in formatting, use %z or %Z.

Look for strf docs for details

answered Feb 10 '18 at 19:52

Slam

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Since by default `%z` seems to give the offset without colon (`:`), this might also be useful: https://gist.github.com/mattstibbs/a283f55a124d2de1b1d732daaac1f7f8 – Luiz Tauffer Sep 01 '21 at 13:20
1

Yes, python still does not provide support for `%:z` formatting, but just to warn you on your gist: there's support for sub-minute TZs in python, so your code may break on exotic data – Slam Sep 01 '21 at 20:54

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 10 '18 at 19:59

This will convert your local time to UTC and print it:

import datetime, pytz
from dateutil.tz.tz import tzoffset

loc = datetime.datetime(2009, 4, 19, 21, 12, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, -7200))

print(loc.astimezone(pytz.utc).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f') )

(http://pytz.sourceforge.net/)

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 17 '19 at 09:28

1

I couldn't import timezone module (and hadn't much time to know why) so I set TZ environment variable which override the /etc/localtime information

>>> import os
>>> import datetime
>>> print  datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')
2019-05-17 11:26
>>> os.environ["TZ"] = "UTC"
>>> print  datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M')
2019-05-17 09:26

answered May 17 '19 at 09:28

Emmanuel

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``timezone`` is for Python 3. Python 2.7 is EOL and you should upgrade to Python 3.8. – wyz23x2 Aug 04 '20 at 02:48
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@wyz23x2 the appliance operating system was so much locked that I simply had no other options. – Emmanuel Feb 05 '21 at 13:47

Python Datetime : use strftime() with a timezone-aware date

4 Answers4