Generating current time in a chosen time zone

Question

I'm trying to perform a, to me, simple task of generating a current date/time combo at a speficic time zone. All I see is suggestions to use pytz even though datetime includes the tzinfo class to deal with timezones. However, if I try to use tzinfo, it does not work:

>>> from datetime import datetime, tzinfo
>>> d = datetime.now(tzinfo.tzname("EDT"))
TypeError: descriptor 'tzname' requires a 'datetime.tzinfo' object but received a 'str'

The docs say you can use a time zone name like "EDT" or "GMT". What's wrong with this?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '14 at 19:34

1

The function tzinfo.tzname does the opposite of what you think it does.

It takes a datetime object and returns a string indicating the time zone.

answered Aug 06 '14 at 19:34

merlin2011

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Ah! :( So you really must use an extra module, pytz, for this? – mart1n Aug 06 '14 at 19:36
@mart1n, It would appear so, yes. See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18646797/391161). – merlin2011 Aug 06 '14 at 19:37
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tzinfo is an Abstract Class. This is there more for a guide than to a lever, as @merlin2011 has mentioned. – Mauro Baraldi Aug 06 '14 at 19:42

Generating current time in a chosen time zone

1 Answers1