How to convert a datetime from one arbitrary timezone to another arbitrary timezone

Question

Let's say I receive an arbitrary datetime object in a request, like this, which could be coming from any possible timezone - I don't know which one. For the sake of example, pretend it comes from the East Coast

import pytz
from colander import iso8601
...
    ests1 = iso8601.parse_date('2016-04-01T00:00:00.0000-04:00')

pretend ests1 is the object that comes in

Using pytz, I can find out a bit about it's timezone

    etz = ests1.timetz()  # 00:00:00-04:00
    etzi = ests1.tzinfo   # <FixedOffset '-04:00' datetime.timedelta(-1, 72000)>
    etzn = ests1.tzname() # '-04:00'  # EST
    edst = ests1.dst()    #  '0:00:00'

Note that no matter what date ests1 is - dst() always seems to return the same value

I would like to do something like this:

    psts1 = pytz.timezone(etzn
                     ).localize(dtime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ests1)
                     ).astimezone(pytz.timezone('US/Pacific'))

but that just results in

UnknownTimeZoneError: '-04:00'

I have also tried this:

def convert_dt_to_pstz(dt):
    pstoffset = -25200 # -7 * 60 * 60   - but what about DST?  how do we tell which offset to use? -8 or -7
    return dt.astimezone(tzoffset(None,pstoffset)) # convert to PST

But the problem with that is I don't know how to tell if the date needs to be adjusted for daylight savings time.

I also tried this:

    utc_date = ests1.astimezone(pytz.utc)   # 2016-04-01T04:00:00+00:00
    ptz = pytz.timezone('US/Pacific')
    new_date = utc_date.replace(tzinfo=ptz) # 2016-04-01T04:00:00-07:53

But look at the strange result for new_date: -07:53 ??

Please note that I cannot use any information corresponding to "now" or the location of the server as it could be anywhere

Answer 1

To convert a timezone-aware datetime object into a different timezone, use datetime.astimezone() method:

pacific_time = ests1.astimezone(pytz.timezone('US/Pacific'))

In general, pytz docs recommend to call pytz.timezone('US/Pacific').normalize() on the result but you don't need it here because ests1 timezone has a fixed utc offset.

Answer 2

I think I got it right this time:

from datetime import datetime as dtime
import pytz
from colander import iso8601

ests1 = iso8601.parse_date('2016-04-01T00:00:00.0000-04:00')
epoch = dtime(1970, 1, 1, tzinfo=pytz.UTC)          # 1970-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
ept = (ests1 - epoch).total_seconds()               # 1459483200.0

utc_date = dtime.fromtimestamp(ept, tz=pytz.UTC)    # 2016-04-01T04:00:00+00:00
ptz = pytz.timezone('US/Pacific')
pst_date = dtime.fromtimestamp(ept, tz=ptz)         # 2016-03-31T21:00:00-07:00

ests2 = iso8601.parse_date('2016-02-01T00:00:00.0000-04:00')
ept2 = (ests2 - epoch).total_seconds()              # 1454299200.00

utc_date2 = dtime.fromtimestamp(ept2, tz=pytz.UTC)  # 2016-02-01T04:00:00+00:00
pst_date2 = dtime.fromtimestamp(ept2, tz=ptz)       # 2016-01-31T20:00:00-08:00

so, it seems to be as simple as

def convert_to_tz(dt,tz_new):
   seconds = (dt - epoch).total_seconds()
   return dtime.fromtimestamp(seconds, tz=tz_new)