In Python, how do you convert seconds since epoch to a `datetime` object?
PythonDatetimeDateTimeEpochPython Problem Overview
The time
module can be initialized using seconds since epoch:
>>> import time
>>> t1=time.gmtime(1284286794)
>>> t1
time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=19,
tm_sec=54, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=255, tm_isdst=0)
Is there an elegant way to initialize a datetime.datetime
object in the same way?
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp
will do, if you know the time zone, you could produce the same output as with time.gmtime
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 11, 19, 54)
or
>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 10, 19, 54)
Solution 2 - Python
Seconds since epoch to datetime
to strftime
:
>>> ts_epoch = 1362301382
>>> ts = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts_epoch).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
>>> ts
'2013-03-03 01:03:02'
Solution 3 - Python
From the docs, the recommended way of getting a timezone aware datetime object from seconds since epoch is:
from datetime import datetime, timezone
datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, timezone.utc)
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, pytz.utc)
Solution 4 - Python
Note that datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp) and .utcfromtimestamp(timestamp) fail on windows for dates before Jan. 1, 1970 while negative unix timestamps seem to work on unix-based platforms. The docs say this:
See also Issue1646728
Solution 5 - Python
For those that want it ISO 8601 compliant, since the other solutions do not have the T
separator nor the time offset (except Meistro's answer):
from datetime import datetime, timezone
result = datetime.fromtimestamp(1463288494, timezone.utc).isoformat('T', 'microseconds')
print(result) # 2016-05-15T05:01:34.000000+00:00
Note, I use fromtimestamp
because if I used utcfromtimestamp
I would need to chain on .astimezone(...)
anyway to get the offset.
If you don't want to go all the way to microseconds
you can choose a different unit with the
isoformat() method.