Does Python s time time return the local or UTC timestamp

Question

Does time time   in the Python time module return the system s time or the time in UTC

User · Answer

time time    return the unix timestamp  you could use datetime library to get local time or UTC time  import datetime  local time   datetime datetime now   print local time strftime   Y m d  H M S     utc time   datetime datetime utcnow    print utc time strftime   Y m d  H M S

User · Answer

timestamp is always time in utc  but when you call datetime datetime fromtimestamp  it returns you time in your local timezone corresponding to this timestamp  so result depend of your locale     gt  gt  gt  import time  datetime   gt  gt  gt  time time   1564494136 0434234   gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime now   datetime datetime 2019  7  30  16  42  3  899179   gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime fromtimestamp time time    datetime datetime 2019  7  30  16  43  12  4610    There exist nice library arrow with different behaviour  In same case it returns you time object with UTC timezone    gt  gt  gt  import arrow  gt  gt  gt  arrow now    lt Arrow  2019-07-30T16 43 27 868760 03 00  gt   gt  gt  gt  arrow get time time     lt Arrow  2019-07-30T13 43 56 565342 00 00  gt

User · Answer

The answer could be neither or both    neither  time time   returns approximately the number of seconds elapsed since the Epoch  The result doesn t depend on timezone so it is neither UTC nor local time  Here s POSIX defintion for  Seconds Since the Epoch   both  time time   doesn t require your system s clock to be synchronized so it reflects its value  though it has nothing to do with local timezone   Different computers may get different results at the same time  On the other hand if your computer time is synchronized then it is easy to get UTC time from the timestamp  if we ignore leap seconds    from datetime import datetime  utc dt   datetime utcfromtimestamp timestamp     On how to get timestamps from UTC time in various Python versions  see How can I get a date converted to seconds since epoch according to UTC

User · Answer

There is no such thing as an  epoch  in a specific timezone  The epoch is well-defined as a specific moment in time  so if you change the timezone  the time itself changes as well  Specifically  this time is Jan 1 1970 00 00 00 UTC  So time time   returns the number of seconds since the epoch

User · Answer

This is for the text form of a timestamp that can be used in your text files   The title of the question was different in the past  so the introduction to this answer was changed to clarify how it could be interpreted as the time   updated 2016-01-14    You can get the timestamp as a string using the  now   or  utcnow   of the datetime datetime    gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  print datetime datetime utcnow   2012-12-15 10 14 51 898000   The now differs from utcnow as expected -- otherwise they work the same way    gt  gt  gt  print datetime datetime now   2012-12-15 11 15 09 205000   You can render the timestamp to the string explicitly    gt  gt  gt  str datetime datetime now     2012-12-15 11 15 24 984000    Or you can be even more explicit to format the timestamp the way you like    gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime now   strftime   A   d   B  Y  I  M p    Saturday  15  December 2012 11 19AM    If you want the ISO format  use the  isoformat   method of the object    gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime now   isoformat    2013-11-18T08 18 31 809000    You can use these in variables for calculations and printing without conversions    gt  gt  gt  ts   datetime datetime now    gt  gt  gt  tf   datetime datetime now    gt  gt  gt  te   tf - ts  gt  gt  gt  print ts 2015-04-21 12 02 19 209915  gt  gt  gt  print tf 2015-04-21 12 02 30 449895  gt  gt  gt  print te 0 00 11 239980

User · Answer

I eventually settled for    gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  time mktime time gmtime    1509467455 0

User · Answer

The time time   function returns the number of seconds since the epoch  as seconds   Note that the  epoch  is defined as the start of January 1st  1970 in UTC   So the epoch is defined in terms of UTC and establishes a global moment in time   No matter where you are  seconds past epoch   time time    returns the same value at the same moment   Here is some sample output I ran on my computer  converting it to a string as well   Python 2 7 3  default  Apr 24 2012  00 00 54    GCC 4 7 0 20120414  prerelease   on linux2 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  ts   time time    gt  gt  gt  print ts 1355563265 81  gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  st   datetime datetime fromtimestamp ts  strftime   Y- m- d  H  M  S    gt  gt  gt  print st 2012-12-15 01 21 05  gt  gt  gt    The ts variable is the time returned in seconds   I then converted it to a string using the datetime library making it a string that is human readable

User · Answer

To get a local timestamp using datetime library  Python 3 x   wanted format  year-month-day hour minute seconds  from datetime import datetime    get time now dt   datetime now     format it to a string timeStamp   dt strftime   Y- m- d  H  M  S      print it to screen print timeStamp

User · Answer

Based on the answer from  squiguy  to get a true timestamp I would type cast it from float     gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  ts   int time time     gt  gt  gt  print ts  1389177318   At least that s the concept

[python] Does Python's time.time() return the local or UTC timestamp?

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