I have a string representing a unix timestamp (i.e. "1284101485") in Python, and I'd like to convert it to a readable date. When I use time.strftime
, I get a TypeError
:
>>>import time
>>>print time.strftime("%B %d %Y", "1284101485")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: argument must be 9-item sequence, not str
Use datetime
module:
from datetime import datetime
ts = int('1284101485')
# if you encounter a "year is out of range" error the timestamp
# may be in milliseconds, try `ts /= 1000` in that case
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(1172969203.1)
datetime.datetime(2007, 3, 4, 0, 46, 43, 100000)
Taken from http://seehuhn.de/pages/pdate
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_time_value)
will make it human-readable. [1]: stackoverflow.com/questions/3682748/…
The most voted answer suggests using fromtimestamp which is error prone since it uses the local timezone. To avoid issues a better approach is to use UTC:
datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(posix_time).strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')
Where posix_time is the Posix epoch time you want to convert
TZ=right/UTC date
vs. TZ=UTC date
is Mon 7 Sep 15:58:05 UTC 2020
vs. Mon 7 Sep 15:58:32 UTC 2020
(the difference may change depending on the number of leap seconds)
ValueError: year 53085 is out of range
>>> import time
>>> time.ctime(int("1284101485"))
'Fri Sep 10 16:51:25 2010'
>>> time.strftime("%D %H:%M", time.localtime(int("1284101485")))
'09/10/10 16:51'
time.ctime()
and time.localtime()
might fail for past dates if a local timezone had different utc offset. You need a historic timezone database such as provided by pytz
module (or your OS). Or just work in UTC and use time.gmtime()
. datetime
might provide wider date range so datetime.utcfromtimestamp()
could be used instead of time
functions.
There are two parts:
Convert the unix timestamp ("seconds since epoch") to the local time Display the local time in the desired format.
A portable way to get the local time that works even if the local time zone had a different utc offset in the past and python has no access to the tz database is to use a pytz
timezone:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import tzlocal # $ pip install tzlocal
unix_timestamp = float("1284101485")
local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone() # get pytz timezone
local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, local_timezone)
To display it, you could use any time format that is supported by your system e.g.:
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))
print(local_time.strftime("%B %d %Y")) # print date in your format
If you do not need a local time, to get a readable UTC time instead:
utc_time = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(utc_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f+00:00 (UTC)"))
If you don't care about the timezone issues that might affect what date is returned or if python has access to the tz database on your system:
local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f"))
On Python 3, you could get a timezone-aware datetime using only stdlib (the UTC offset may be wrong if python has no access to the tz database on your system e.g., on Windows):
#!/usr/bin/env python3
from datetime import datetime, timezone
utc_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, timezone.utc)
local_time = utc_time.astimezone()
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))
Functions from the time
module are thin wrappers around the corresponding C API and therefore they may be less portable than the corresponding datetime
methods otherwise you could use them too:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
unix_timestamp = int("1284101485")
utc_time = time.gmtime(unix_timestamp)
local_time = time.localtime(unix_timestamp)
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", local_time))
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S+00:00 (UTC)", utc_time))
.timestamp()
method. How to convert the time string depends on its format -- it is ambiguous in the general case but there are many solution for various cases.
In Python 3.6+:
import datetime
timestamp = 1642445213
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
print(f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}")
Output (local time)
2022-01-17 20:46:53
Explanation
Line #1: Import datetime library.
Line #2: Unix time which is seconds since 1970-01-01.
Line #3: Converts this to a unix time object, check with: type(value)
Line #4: Prints in the same format as strp. Local time. To print in UTC see example below.
Bonus
To save the date to a string then print it, use this:
my_date = f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}"
print(my_date)
To output in UTC:
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, tz=datetime.timezone.utc)
# 2022-01-17 18:50:52
tz
argument in fromtimestamp
, e.g. to datetime.timezone.utc
.
Other than using time/datetime package, pandas can also be used to solve the same problem.Here is how we can use pandas to convert timestamp to readable date:
Timestamps can be in two formats:
13 digits(milliseconds) - To convert milliseconds to date, use: import pandas result_ms=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261000',unit='ms') str(result_ms) Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01' 10 digits(seconds) - To convert seconds to date, use: import pandas result_s=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261',unit='s') str(result_s) Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01'
For a human readable timestamp from a UNIX timestamp, I have used this in scripts before:
import os, datetime
datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(os.path.getmtime("FILE"))).strftime("%B %d, %Y")
Output:
'December 26, 2012'
You can convert the current time like this
t=datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time())
t.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2012-03-07'
To convert a date in string to different formats.
import datetime,time
def createDateObject(str_date,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):
timeStamp = time.mktime(time.strptime(str_date,strFormat))
return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timeStamp)
def FormatDate(objectDate,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):
return objectDate.strftime(strFormat)
Usage
=====
o=createDateObject('2013-03-03')
print FormatDate(o,'%d-%m-%Y')
Output 03-03-2013
timestamp ="124542124"
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
exct_time = value.strftime('%d %B %Y %H:%M:%S')
Get the readable date from timestamp with time also, also you can change the format of the date.
Note that utcfromtimestamp
can lead to unexpected results since it returns a naive datetime object. Python treats naive datetime as local time - while UNIX time refers to UTC.
This ambiguity can be avoided by setting the tz
argument in fromtimestamp
:
from datetime import datetime, timezone
dtobj = datetime.fromtimestamp(1284101485, timezone.utc)
>>> print(repr(dtobj))
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 10, 6, 51, 25, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
Now you can format to string, e.g. an ISO8601 compliant format:
>>> print(dtobj.isoformat(timespec='milliseconds').replace('+00:00', 'Z'))
2010-09-10T06:51:25.000Z
Use the following codes, I hope it will solve your problem.
import datetime as dt
print(dt.datetime.fromtimestamp(int("1284101485")).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
import datetime
temp = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1386181800).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print temp
Another way that this can be done using gmtime and format function;
from time import gmtime
print('{}-{}-{} {}:{}:{}'.format(*gmtime(1538654264.703337)))
Output: 2018-10-4 11:57:44
If you are working with a dataframe and do not want the series cannot be converted to class int
error. Use the code below.
new_df= pd.to_datetime(df_new['time'], unit='s')
i just successfully used:
>>> type(tstamp)
pandas.tslib.Timestamp
>>> newDt = tstamp.date()
>>> type(newDt)
datetime.date
You can use easy_date to make it easy:
import date_converter
my_date_string = date_converter.timestamp_to_string(1284101485, "%B %d, %Y")
strptime
and strftime
isn't intuitive... And even not readable... But I understand and respect your opinion
Use datetime.strftime(format)
:
from datetime import datetime
unixtime = int('1284101485')
# Print with local time
print(datetime.fromtimestamp(unixtime).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
# Print with UTC time
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unixtime).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp): Return the local date corresponding to the POSIX timestamp, such as is returned by time.time().
datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp): Return the UTC datetime corresponding to the POSIX timestamp, with tzinfo None. (The resulting object is naive.)
quick and dirty one liner:
'-'.join(str(x) for x in list(tuple(datetime.datetime.now().timetuple())[:6]))
'2013-5-5-1-9-43'
Success story sharing
.fromtimestamp()
might fail for past dates if a local timezone had different utc offset. You need a historic timezone database such as provided bypytz
module (or your OS). Or just work in UTC and use.utcfromtimestamp()
.pytz
. If it is unclear; ask a separate Stack Overflow question.pytz
solution.