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Converting time zones for datetime objects in Python

Date: 2009-05-05  |   Tags: datetime, python   |   6 Comments

Install pytz

I am using pytz, which is a time zone definitions package. You can install it using Easy Install. On Ubuntu, do this:

sudo easy_install --upgrade pytz

Add time zone information to a naive datetime object

from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone

date_str = "2009-05-05 22:28:15"
datetime_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
datetime_obj_utc = datetime_obj.replace(tzinfo=timezone('UTC'))
print datetime_obj_utc.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z")

Results:

2009-05-05 22:28:15 UTC+0000

Convert time zones

from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone

fmt = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z"

# Current time in UTC
now_utc = datetime.now(timezone('UTC'))
print now_utc.strftime(fmt)

# Convert to US/Pacific time zone
now_pacific = now_utc.astimezone(timezone('US/Pacific'))
print now_pacific.strftime(fmt)

# Convert to Europe/Berlin time zone
now_berlin = now_pacific.astimezone(timezone('Europe/Berlin'))
print now_berlin.strftime(fmt)

Results:

2009-05-06 03:09:49 UTC+0000
2009-05-05 20:09:49 PDT-0700
2009-05-06 05:09:49 CEST+0200

List time zones

There are 559 time zones included in pytz. Here's how to print the US time zones:

from pytz import all_timezones

print len(all_timezones)
for zone in all_timezones:
    if 'US' in zone:
        print zone

Results:

US/Alaska
US/Aleutian
US/Arizona
US/Central
US/East-Indiana
US/Eastern
US/Hawaii
US/Indiana-Starke
US/Michigan
US/Mountain
US/Pacific
US/Pacific-New
US/Samoa

See also:

6 Comments — feed icon Comments feed for this post


#1 GMTSlider.com commented on 2010-09-28:

Great! Thanks for this chunk of code! Exactly what I was looking for.


#2 Joe Kwiatkowski commented on 2011-01-27:

Smashing! Thank you.


#3 kamalakar commented on 2011-10-10:

It was very usefull thanks a lot :)


#4 RubyH20 commented on 2012-01-10:

Wow, I have looked at a ton of TZ conversions for Python; this is by far the best example. Thank you!!


#5 bala commented on 2012-09-25:

You're Zen! Thank you


#6 akaihola commented on 2012-10-26:

For Python timezone conversions, I use the handy table from the PyCon 2012 presentation by Taavi Burns.

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