Convert python datetime to epoch with strftime

Question

I have a time in UTC from which I want the number of seconds since epoch.

I am using strftime to convert it to the number of seconds. Taking 1st April 2012 as an exa

Answer 1

import time
from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()

time.mktime(now.timetuple())

Answer 2

import time
from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()

# same as above except keeps microseconds
time.mktime(now.timetuple()) + now.microsecond * 1e-6

(Sorry, it wouldn't let me comment on existing answer)

Answer 3

I had serious issues with Timezones and such. The way Python handles all that happen to be pretty confusing (to me). Things seem to be working fine using the calendar module (see links 1, 2, 3 and 4).

>>> import datetime
>>> import calendar
>>> aprilFirst=datetime.datetime(2012, 04, 01, 0, 0)
>>> calendar.timegm(aprilFirst.timetuple())
1333238400

Answer 4

This works in Python 2 and 3:

>>> import time
>>> import calendar
>>> calendar.timegm(time.gmtime())
1504917998

Just following the official docs... https://docs.python.org/2/library/time.html#module-time

Answer 5

if you just need a timestamp in unix /epoch time, this one line works:

created_timestamp = int((datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds())
>>> created_timestamp
1522942073L

and depends only on datetime works in python2 and python3

Answer 6

For an explicit timezone-independent solution, use the pytz library.

import datetime
import pytz

pytz.utc.localize(datetime.datetime(2012,4,1,0,0), is_dst=False).timestamp()

Output (float): 1333238400.0