datetime.fromtimestamp() - returns my local timezone instead of GMT

Question

I have a problem converting timestamp to GMT. As far as I know, the timestamp is allways in GMT time so I expect datetime.fromtimestamp returning GMT or timezone-aware datetime but it returns my local (Bratislava/Prague) datetime.

import datetime
datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1566720000)
datetime.datetime(2019, 8, 25, 10, 0)

But according to Epoch Converter it is

GMT: Sunday, August 25, 2019 8:00:00 AM

EDIT: datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1566720000).tzinfo returns nothing so it is not tz aware.

Do you know where is the problem?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 25 '19 at 13:54

fromtimestamp() returns the local date and time. If it needs to be tz-aware, the parameter tz must be specified:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp

Return the local date and time corresponding to the POSIX timestamp, such as is returned by time.time(). If optional argument tz is None or not specified, the timestamp is converted to the platform’s local date and time, and the returned datetime object is naive.

If you need the a datetime object in UTC, use utcfromtimestamp instead:

datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp)

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 25 '19 at 13:54

4

Looks like you want utcfromtimestamp

>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1566720000)
datetime.datetime(2019, 8, 25, 8, 0)

Keep in mind this still returns a naive datetime object

answered Aug 25 '19 at 13:54

monkut

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If you want to avoid wanings because of the naive date I solved that with: datetime.fromtimestamp((datetime.now(timezone.utc).timestamp() + next_level_info['upgrade_time']), timezone.utc) – redigaffi Oct 01 '21 at 05:48

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 13 '22 at 07:02

It is not a good idea to use datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(). It returns a naive datetime object (without time zone information) which would be interpreted by many functions as datetime in your local time zone! It is much better to use time zone aware objects.

The following code returns time zone aware datetime in the UTC time zone.

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1566720000, datetime.timezone.utc)
datetime.datetime(2019, 8, 25, 8, 0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

datetime.fromtimestamp() - returns my local timezone instead of GMT

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