Convert UTC datetime string to local datetime

Question

I\'ve never had to convert time to and from UTC. Recently had a request to have my app be timezone aware, and I\'ve been running myself in circles. Lots of information on co

Answer 1

If you don't want to provide your own tzinfo objects, check out the python-dateutil library. It provides tzinfo implementations on top of a zoneinfo (Olson) database such that you can refer to time zone rules by a somewhat canonical name.

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz

# METHOD 1: Hardcode zones:
from_zone = tz.gettz('UTC')
to_zone = tz.gettz('America/New_York')

# METHOD 2: Auto-detect zones:
from_zone = tz.tzutc()
to_zone = tz.tzlocal()

# utc = datetime.utcnow()
utc = datetime.strptime('2011-01-21 02:37:21', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

# Tell the datetime object that it's in UTC time zone since 
# datetime objects are 'naive' by default
utc = utc.replace(tzinfo=from_zone)

# Convert time zone
central = utc.astimezone(to_zone)

Edit Expanded example to show strptime usage

Edit 2 Fixed API usage to show better entry point method

Edit 3 Included auto-detect methods for timezones (Yarin)