Convert python datetime to epoch with strftime

Question

I have a time in UTC from which I want the number of seconds since epoch   I am using strftime to convert it to the number of seconds  Taking 1st April 2012 as an example    gt  gt  gt datetime datetime 2012 04 01 0 0  strftime   s    1333234800    1st of April 2012 UTC from epoch is 1333238400 but this above returns 1333234800 which is different by 1 hour    So it looks like that strftime is taking my system time into account and applies a timezone shift somewhere  I thought datetime was purely naive   How can I get around that  If possible avoiding to import other libraries unless standard   I have portability concerns

User · Answer

I had serious issues with Timezones and such  The way Python handles all that happen to be pretty confusing  to me   Things seem to be working fine using the calendar module  see links 1  2  3 and 4     gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  import calendar  gt  gt  gt  aprilFirst datetime datetime 2012  04  01  0  0   gt  gt  gt  calendar timegm aprilFirst timetuple    1333238400

User · Answer

import time from datetime import datetime now   datetime now      same as above except keeps microseconds time mktime now timetuple      now microsecond   1e-6    Sorry  it wouldn t let me comment on existing answer

User · Answer

If you want to convert a python datetime to seconds since epoch you could do it explicitly    gt  gt  gt   datetime datetime 2012 04 01 0 0  - datetime datetime 1970 1 1   total seconds   1333238400 0   In Python 3 3  you can use timestamp   instead    gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime 2012 4 1 0 0  timestamp   1333234800 0     Why you should not use datetime strftime   s    Python doesn t actually support  s as an argument to strftime  if you check at http   docs python org library datetime html strftime-and-strptime-behavior it s not in the list   the only reason it s working is because Python is passing the information to your system s strftime  which uses your local timezone    gt  gt  gt  datetime datetime 2012 04 01 0 0  strftime   s    1333234800

User · Answer

This works in Python 2 and 3    gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  import calendar  gt  gt  gt  calendar timegm time gmtime    1504917998   Just following the official docs    https   docs python org 2 library time html module-time

User · Answer

import time from datetime import datetime now   datetime now    time mktime now timetuple

User · Answer

For an explicit timezone-independent solution  use the pytz library   import datetime import pytz  pytz utc localize datetime datetime 2012 4 1 0 0   is dst False  timestamp     Output  float   1333238400 0

User · Answer

In Python 3 7     Return a datetime corresponding to a date string in one of the formats   emitted by date isoformat   and datetime isoformat    Specifically    this function supports strings in the format s    YYYY-MM-DD  HH  MM  SS  fff fff      HH MM  SS  ffffff      where     can match any single character    https   docs python org 3 library datetime html datetime datetime fromisoformat

User · Answer

if you just need a timestamp in unix  epoch time  this one line works   created timestamp   int  datetime datetime now   - datetime datetime 1970 1 1   total seconds     gt  gt  gt  created timestamp 1522942073L   and depends only on datetime works in python2 and python3

[python] Convert python datetime to epoch with strftime

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