Converting a unix timestamp string to a date that can be read

Problem

In Python, I have a string that represents a unix timestamp (for example, “1284101485”) that I’d like to convert to a readable date. I get a TypeError: time.strftime when I use it.

>>>import time
>>>print time.strftime("%B %d %Y", "1284101485")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: argument must be 9-item sequence, not str

Asked by VeryNewToPython

Solution #1

Use datetime module:

from datetime import datetime
ts = int('1284101485')

# if you encounter a "year is out of range" error the timestamp
# may be in milliseconds, try `ts /= 1000` in that case
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

Answered by Michał Niklas

Solution #2

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(1172969203.1)
datetime.datetime(2007, 3, 4, 0, 46, 43, 100000)

Taken from http://seehuhn.de/pages/pdate

Answered by Daniel

Solution #3

The most popular solution recommends using fromtimestamp, which is prone to errors due to its usage of the local timezone. To avoid problems, it is preferable to use UTC:

datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(posix_time).strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')

Where posix time is the time you wish to convert in Posix epoch.

Answered by rkachach

Solution #4

>>> import time
>>> time.ctime(int("1284101485"))
'Fri Sep 10 16:51:25 2010'
>>> time.strftime("%D %H:%M", time.localtime(int("1284101485")))
'09/10/10 16:51'

Answered by John La Rooy

Solution #5

There are two sections to the project:

Using a pytz timezone provides a portable technique to acquire the local time that works even if the local time zone previously had a different utc offset and python does not have access to the tz database:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import tzlocal  # $ pip install tzlocal

unix_timestamp = float("1284101485")
local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone() # get pytz timezone
local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, local_timezone)

You might use any time format supported by your system to show it, such as:

print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))
print(local_time.strftime("%B %d %Y"))  # print date in your format

If you do not need a local time, to get a readable UTC time instead:

utc_time = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(utc_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f+00:00 (UTC)"))

If you don’t mind the timezone difficulties that could effect the date returned, or if python has access to your system’s tz database:

local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f"))

On Python 3, you could get a timezone-aware datetime using only stdlib (the UTC offset may be wrong if python has no access to the tz database on your system e.g., on Windows):

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from datetime import datetime, timezone

utc_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, timezone.utc)
local_time = utc_time.astimezone()
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))

Because the time module’s functions are thin wrappers around the equivalent C API, they may be less portable than the corresponding datetime methods, but you can still use them:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import time

unix_timestamp  = int("1284101485")
utc_time = time.gmtime(unix_timestamp)
local_time = time.localtime(unix_timestamp)
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", local_time)) 
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S+00:00 (UTC)", utc_time))  

Answered by jfs

Post is based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3682748/converting-unix-timestamp-string-to-readable-date