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I have one date format "Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT" I want to convert this format to unix timestamp.

I am using the following code ===>

news_date = datetime.strptime(news_date, '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z')
news_date = calendar.timegm(news_date.utctimetuple())

But gives the following error ===>

ValueError: time data 'Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT' does not match format '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z'

How can i solve it and get the unix timestamp from this?

Mehul Dhariyaparmar
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  • Your problem is in `strptime`. Try to read the doc of such functions and solve this problem. Then go to next problem. One step at a time (if I remember correctly, in the same module you have also unix time [seconds from epoch)/ – Giacomo Catenazzi Jun 19 '20 at 11:51

1 Answers1

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%Z can't parse the timezone name PT - I suggest you skip parsing it and add it "manually" instead:

from datetime import datetime
import dateutil

news_date = "Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT"

# parse string without the timezone:
news_date = datetime.strptime(news_date[:-3], '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')

# add the timezone:
news_date = news_date.replace(tzinfo=dateutil.tz.gettz('US/Pacific'))

# extract POSIX (seconds since epoch):
news_date_posix = news_date.timestamp()
# 1592284266.0

if you have multiple strings with different timezones, you could use a dict to map the abbreviations to time zone names, e.g.

tzmapping = {'PT': 'US/Pacific'}
news_date = "Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT"
# get appropriate timezone from string, according to tzmapping:
tz = dateutil.tz.gettz(tzmapping[news_date.split(' ')[-1]])
# parse string and add timezone:
news_date_datetime = datetime.strptime(news_date[:-3], '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')
news_date_datetime = news_date_datetime.replace(tzinfo=tz)
FObersteiner
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