python2.6.6 Convert apache log timestamp to seconds since epoch (unix style)

Question

As I am completely lost in the dozens of ways you find on stackoverflow to do timestamp conversions, so I will ask here the complete question:

Convert this timestamp from an apache log (in CEST timezone):

30/Aug/2015:05:13:53 +0200

Into this:

1440904433

Using

$ python --version
Python 2.6.6

Verification:

$ date --date @1440904433
Sun Aug 30 05:13:53 CEST 2015
$ date -u --date @1440904433
Sun Aug 30 03:13:53 UTC 2015

Bad results are:

1440911633
1440908033

My current code goes until here:

>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> parser.parse("30/Aug/2015:05:13:53 +0200".replace(':',' ',1))
datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 30, 5, 13, 53, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, 7200))

Please do not propose pytz module, I don't have it and I can't install it. Please do not propose solutions for python3

Answer 1

Two steps:

1. Convert the time string into an aware datetime object (or a naive datetime object that represents time in UTC).

   >>> from dateutil import parser
   >>> parser.parse("30/Aug/2015:05:13:53 +0200".replace(':', ' ', 1))
   datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 30, 5, 13, 53, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, 7200))
   

   You've already done it. See How to parse dates with -0400 timezone string in python? on how to do it using only stdlib.

2. Convert an aware datetime object to "seconds since the Epoch":

   >>> from datetime import datetime
   >>> from dateutil import tz
   >>> td = d - datetime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=tz.tzutc())
   >>> td
   datetime.timedelta(16677, 11633)
   >>> (td.microseconds + (td.seconds + td.days * 86400) * 10**6) // 10**6
   1440904433
   

   Use / and enable from __future__ import division, to get fractions of a second. If you don't need to support fractions; you could simplify the formula:

   >>> td.seconds + td.days * 86400
   1440904433
   

   If you get a utc time on the 1st step using only stdlib then you don't need dateutil.tz here. See Converting datetime.date to UTC timestamp in Python

Here's a Python 3 solution for visitors from a search engine:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> d = datetime.strptime("30/Aug/2015:05:13:53 +0200", "%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z")
>>> d.timestamp()
1440904433.0