How do I convert a string to a python datetime object with a relevant timezone?

Question

I have a string similar to "2012-06-14 20:38:24.213-7:00" and want to convert it to a python date time object with the time zone kept intact, how would I do this?

Answer 1

A fixed offset is not enough to find out the timezone name.

Otherwise pytz and/or dateutil libraries might help:

>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> parser.parse('2012-06-14 20:38:24.213-7:00')
datetime.datetime(2012, 6, 14, 20, 38, 24, 213000, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, -25200))