python converting string in localtime to UTC epoch timestamp

Question

I have strings in YMD hms format that had the timezone stripped. But I know they are in Eastern time with daylight savings time.

I am trying to convert them into ep

Answer 1

First of all '%s' is not supported on all platforms , its actually working for you because your platform C library’s strftime() function (that is called by Python) supports it. This function is what is causing the issue most probably, I am guessing its not timezone aware , hence when taking difference from epoch time it is using your local timezone, which is most probably EST(?)

Instead of relying on '%s' , which only works in few platforms (linux, I believe) , you should manually subtract the datetime you got from epoch (1970/1/1 00:00:00) to get the actual seconds since epoch . Example -

e = (utc_dt - datetime.datetime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,tzinfo=pytz.utc)).total_seconds()

Demo -

>>> (utc_dt - datetime.datetime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,tzinfo=pytz.utc)).total_seconds()
1429578727.0

This correctly corresponds to the date-time you get.