How should I print the time in a specific timezone in Python?

Question

This question is really quite simple, and it's basically the title. I am in Western Australia.

Does this answer your question? [How to get the current time in Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/415511/how-to-get-the-current-time-in-python) — Ayush, Jun 27 '20 at 06:11
Specifically, use the datetime and pytz module. Look at this [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/28576383/12279039) — Ayush, Jun 27 '20 at 06:14
Save yourself some headache and use [dateutil](https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) instead of pytz - e.g. like [this](https://stackoverflow.com/a/62578255/10197418). — FObersteiner, Jun 27 '20 at 07:22

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 27 '20 at 07:53

3

Yup the pytz and datetime module is the way to go:

import pytz
from datetime import datetime

timezone = 'Australia/Perth'
py_timezone = pytz.timezone(timezone)
current_datetime = datetime.now(py_timezone)

If you need to find a specific timezone you use the all_timezones property in pytz, which will return a list of all timezones.

import pytz
all_timezones = pytz.all_timezones

answered Jun 27 '20 at 07:53

Eugene Upston

196
1
3

`datetime.now(py_timezone)` - getting a timezone-aware datetime object with `pytz` works for `.now()`, however, the generic way to do this would be `py_timezone.localize(naive_dtobj)`. IMHO, localize (and normalize) should always be mentioned in the context of `pytz` since I've seen many cases where this went wrong (some of my own code included). – FObersteiner Jun 27 '20 at 13:44

Tom Carrick · Answer 2 · 2020-06-27T10:37:30.373

1

pytz is likely to be deprecated in the future.

The newer and better way to do this, as of Python 3.9 (currently in beta) is to use the zoneinfo module.

Current time in Amsterdam:

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

now = datetime.now(tz=ZoneInfo("Europe/Amsterdam"))

Convert a time in one timezone to another:

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

dt = datetime(2020, 1, 1, 12, tzinfo=ZoneInfo("Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh"))
converted_dt = dt.astimezone(ZoneInfo("Africa/Windhoek"))

Get available timezones:

import zoneinfo

zoneinfo.available_timezones()

You can use this already in Python 3.6+ with the backports.zoneinfo package.

edited Jun 27 '20 at 10:37

answered Jun 27 '20 at 10:00

Tom Carrick

6,349
13
54
78

1

You can use `backports` to use zoneinfo already in earlier versions of Python – FObersteiner Jun 27 '20 at 10:31
Good point, I've added that into the answer, thanks. – Tom Carrick Jun 27 '20 at 10:37

FObersteiner · Answer 3 · 2020-06-27T15:11:56.170

important to notice is also that if you only want to have the local time, i.e. according to the timezone setting of your OS, you only need datetime.

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()
# print(now)
# 2020-06-27 13:08:12.007814

now would be a naive datetime object, i.e. it does not know about the timezone. Python will by default assume that it belongs in your local timezone (not e.g. UTC).

You can even make it timezone-aware without any other imports:

now = now.astimezone()
# print(now)
# 2020-06-27 13:08:12.007814+02:00 # I'm on CEST at the moment; UTC+2

If you want to implement different timezones or change timezones, here's an example how to do it with dateutil:

import dateutil
awst = dateutil.tz.gettz('Australia/Perth')
now_naive = datetime.now()
now_aware = now_naive.replace(tzinfo=awst)

print(now_aware.strftime('%a %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z %Z'))
# Sat 27 Jun 2020 17:08:53 +0800 AWST

# same time in another timezone:
cest = dateutil.tz.gettz('Europe/Berlin')
now_aware = now_aware.astimezone(cest)

print(now_aware.strftime('%a %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z %Z'))
# Sat 27 Jun 2020 11:08:53 +0200 CEST

For Python 3.9 zoneinfo, the methods are basically the same so changing from dateutil to zoneinfo is feasable.

How should I print the time in a specific timezone in Python?

3 Answers3