python: how to handle timestamps (ISO8601)

Question

I have to deal in python with strings representing iso8601 timestamps.

My timestamps string are therefore in the following form:

timestamp = "2011-08-18T10:29:47+03:00"

Currently I'm converting them in python using:

timestamp = timestamp[:-6]
timestamp = datetime.datetime.strptime(timestamp, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S")

But in this way I lose all the information about the time zone. I have seen many examples here on s-o about timestamps and python, unfortunately no one was preserving the timezone as well, or just recover the time zone delay using:

delay = timestamp[-6:]

I have also tried:

timestamp = "2011-08-18T10:29:47+03:00"
timestamp = datetime.datetime.strptime(timestamp, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z")

but it returned

ValueError: 'z' is a bad directive in format '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z'

Can you give some insight?

you might mean [Internet Date/Time Format described in rfc 3339 (a profile of iso 8601)](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339#section-5.6) — jfs, Aug 20 '14 at 09:28
related: [ISO to datetime object: 'z' is a bad directive](http://stackoverflow.com/q/20194496/4279) — jfs, Jan 08 '15 at 07:20

Cédric Julien · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-30T13:47:59.183

3

The python iso8601 module is built with a wonderful parse_date method that can handle timezone info :

>>> import iso8601
>>> iso8601.parse_date("2007-01-25T12:00:00Z")
datetime.datetime(2007, 1, 25, 12, 0, tzinfo=<iso8601.iso8601.Utc ...>)

>>> iso8601.parse_date("2011-08-18T10:29:47+03:00")
datetime.datetime(2011, 8, 18, 10, 29, 47, tzinfo=<FixedOffset '+03:00'>)

If you want to convert it in another timezone, use the astimezone(tz) method

If you need to get the UTC datetime you can use the utctimetuple() method.

edited Jul 30 '12 at 13:47

answered Jul 30 '12 at 09:47

Cédric Julien

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Cool. Can you tell me how to convert the result to UTC+0? – user601836 Jul 30 '12 at 13:37
1

@user601836 : I updated my answer with 2 solutions to convert the date obtained – Cédric Julien Jul 30 '12 at 13:48
I don't recommend using that library. The last update was 2007, and it doesn't accept all valid formats. – tback Dec 18 '12 at 16:29

Martijn Pieters · Answer 2 · 2012-07-30T09:52:09.247

1

You'll need to add an external module that provides timezone support; the pytz module provides you with the necessary timezone database.

You'll either need to parse the timezone by hand to construct a pytz timezone, or use a package like zc.iso8601 or iso8601 to do the parsing for you:

from zc.iso8601.parse import datetimetz
datetimetz(timestamp)

edited Jul 30 '12 at 09:52

answered Jul 30 '12 at 09:46

Martijn Pieters

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python: how to handle timestamps (ISO8601)

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