Python difference between timezones

Question

I have to create a code that can tell me the current time in any city (as a variable) and print the utc offset between that time and utc. I already have the following code which gives the current time and the offset from a timezone, but this timezone is not always utc. Note: the city names are stored in a text file and the user should be able to add and remove any city. I am using tkinter for the gui.

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from pytz import timezone
import pytz

def tz():
    utc = pytz.utc
    amsterdam = timezone('Europe/Amsterdam')
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z'
    loc_dt = utc.localize(datetime.today())
    tz = loc_dt.astimezone(amsterdam)
    print(tz.strftime(fmt))

The file contents are as follows:

Amsterdam
Brasilia
Los Angeles
Abu Dhabi
Tokyo
Singapore

Can someone please help me with an easy code to do this? Thank you in advance

You say the city names are stored in a text file. Does this file also contain the UTC offset for each city, or are you expected to work that out yourself? — Greg Hewgill, May 04 '15 at 02:12
We are expected to work it out for ourselves, the file only contains the names of the cities — FpRoT, May 04 '15 at 02:15
Can you show us an excerpt of the text file you have with the city names? — mmenschig, May 04 '15 at 03:01
What makes you think that arbitrary city names are unique on a global scale? They are not. Ex: Paris, France vs Paris, Texas. — Matt Johnson-Pint, May 04 '15 at 04:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '15 at 04:20

1

You're using pytz already, so I'd go for:

from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone, all_timezones

def to_timezone(dt, tz):
  assert dt.tzinfo is not None
  assert tz in all_timezones
  return dt.astimezone(timezone(tz))

print to_timezone(datetime.now(timezone('UTC')), 'Europe/Amsterdam')

I set it to UTC by default but the point is:

have a non naive datetime
convert it

answered May 04 '15 at 04:20

Jonathan Adami

336
2
9

I think I can work with this, thank you, but just one more thing, it still prints `CEST+0200`, will it always be CEST or is there a way too change it to UTC? – FpRoT May 04 '15 at 05:09
depends on what you want, if you use this to_timezone function, you will have it in the timezone you're asking, you can use it again to have it in utc this way: to_timezone(mycestdt, timezone('UTC')) – Jonathan Adami May 04 '15 at 05:41

Python difference between timezones

1 Answers1