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pythondatetimeunix-timestampstrftime
VeryNewToPython
VeryNewToPython

Reputation: 11513

Converting unix timestamp string to readable date

I have a string representing a unix timestamp (i.e. "1284101485") in Python, and I'd like to convert it to a readable date. When I use time.strftime, I get a TypeError:

>>>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

Upvotes: 1148

Views: 1713367

Answers (20)

Pramesh
Pramesh

Reputation: 343

I used pytz to create a function that converts the UNIX date and time to Helsinki timezone:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from pytz import timezone
import pytz
    
def convert_date_time(unix_date,unix_time):
      utc = pytz.utc
      fmt = '%a %d-%b-%Y'
      time_fmt = '%H:%M:%S'
      utc_dt = utc.localize(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_date))
      utc_time = utc.localize(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_time))
      hki_tz = timezone('Europe/Helsinki') # refer documentation for the TZ adjustments
      hki_dt = utc_dt.astimezone(hki_tz)
      return hki_dt.strftime(fmt), utc_time.strftime(time_fmt)

and to get the values:

unixDate = 1706392800
unixTime = 79800
hkiDate, hkiTime = convert_date_time(unixDate,unixTime)
print(f"Today's date and time is: {hkiDate}, {hkiTime}")

the output looks like this:

Today's date and time is: Sun 28-Jan-2024, 22:10:00

Upvotes: 0

Nick Tsai
Nick Tsai

Reputation: 4129

Use datetime.strftime(format):

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

# Print with local time
print(datetime.fromtimestamp(unixtime).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

# Print with UTC time
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unixtime).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

Upvotes: 14

Contango
Contango

Reputation: 80192

In Python 3.6+:

import datetime

timestamp = 1642445213
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
print(f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}")

Output (local time)

2022-01-17 20:46:53

Explanation

Bonus

To save the date to a string then print it, use this:

my_date = f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}"
print(my_date)

To output in UTC:

value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, tz=datetime.timezone.utc)
# 2022-01-17 18:50:52

Upvotes: 85

Michał Niklas
Michał Niklas

Reputation: 54292

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'))

Upvotes: 1599

tym
tym

Reputation: 63

If you are working with a dataframe and do not want the series cannot be converted to class int error. Use the code below.

new_df= pd.to_datetime(df_new['time'], unit='s')

Upvotes: 4

Deepak
Deepak

Reputation: 121

Use the following codes, I hope it will solve your problem.

import datetime as dt

print(dt.datetime.fromtimestamp(int("1284101485")).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

Upvotes: 9

FObersteiner
FObersteiner

Reputation: 25544

Note that utcfromtimestamp can lead to unexpected results since it returns a naive datetime object. Python treats naive datetime as local time - while UNIX time refers to UTC.

This ambiguity can be avoided by setting the tz argument in fromtimestamp:

from datetime import datetime, timezone

dtobj = datetime.fromtimestamp(1284101485, timezone.utc)

>>> print(repr(dtobj))
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 10, 6, 51, 25, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

Now you can format to string, e.g. an ISO8601 compliant format:

>>> print(dtobj.isoformat(timespec='milliseconds').replace('+00:00', 'Z'))
2010-09-10T06:51:25.000Z

Upvotes: 12

rkachach
rkachach

Reputation: 17325

The most voted answer suggests using fromtimestamp which is error prone since it uses the local timezone. To avoid issues a better approach is to use UTC:

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

Where posix_time is the Posix epoch time you want to convert

Upvotes: 201

h3xus
h3xus

Reputation: 63

Another way that this can be done using gmtime and format function;

from time import gmtime
print('{}-{}-{} {}:{}:{}'.format(*gmtime(1538654264.703337)))

Output: 2018-10-4 11:57:44

Upvotes: 6

Rishabh Jhalani
Rishabh Jhalani

Reputation: 1089

timestamp ="124542124"
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
exct_time = value.strftime('%d %B %Y %H:%M:%S')

Get the readable date from timestamp with time also, also you can change the format of the date.

Upvotes: 24

shubham
shubham

Reputation: 565

Other than using time/datetime package, pandas can also be used to solve the same problem.Here is how we can use pandas to convert timestamp to readable date:

Timestamps can be in two formats:

  1. 13 digits(milliseconds) - To convert milliseconds to date, use:

    import pandas
result_ms=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261000',unit='ms')
str(result_ms)

Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01'

  2. 10 digits(seconds) - To convert seconds to date, use:

    import pandas
result_s=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261',unit='s')
str(result_s)

Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01'

Upvotes: 45

jfs
jfs

Reputation: 414079

There are two parts:

  1. Convert the unix timestamp ("seconds since epoch") to the local time
  2. Display the local time in the desired format.

A portable way to get the local time that works even if the local time zone had a different utc offset in the past and python has no access to the tz database is to use a pytz timezone:

#!/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)

To display it, you could use any time format that is supported by your system e.g.:

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 care about the timezone issues that might affect what date is returned or if python has access to the tz database on your system:

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)"))

Functions from the time module are thin wrappers around the corresponding C API and therefore they may be less portable than the corresponding datetime methods otherwise you could use them too:

#!/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))

Upvotes: 99

Raphael Amoedo
Raphael Amoedo

Reputation: 4455

You can use easy_date to make it easy:

import date_converter
my_date_string = date_converter.timestamp_to_string(1284101485, "%B %d, %Y")

Upvotes: 1

Jared Burrows
Jared Burrows

Reputation: 55517

For a human readable timestamp from a UNIX timestamp, I have used this in scripts before:

import os, datetime

datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(os.path.getmtime("FILE"))).strftime("%B %d, %Y")

Output:

'December 26, 2012'

Upvotes: 38

nimmy
nimmy

Reputation: 29

i just successfully used:

>>> type(tstamp)
pandas.tslib.Timestamp
>>> newDt = tstamp.date()
>>> type(newDt)
datetime.date

Upvotes: 1

itsaruns
itsaruns

Reputation: 669

import datetime
temp = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1386181800).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print temp

Upvotes: 7

eqzx
eqzx

Reputation: 5559

quick and dirty one liner:

'-'.join(str(x) for x in list(tuple(datetime.datetime.now().timetuple())[:6]))

'2013-5-5-1-9-43'

Upvotes: 0

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 1869

You can convert the current time like this

t=datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time())
t.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2012-03-07'

To convert a date in string to different formats.

import datetime,time

def createDateObject(str_date,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):    
    timeStamp = time.mktime(time.strptime(str_date,strFormat))
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timeStamp)

def FormatDate(objectDate,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):
    return objectDate.strftime(strFormat)

Usage
=====
o=createDateObject('2013-03-03')
print FormatDate(o,'%d-%m-%Y')

Output 03-03-2013

Upvotes: 29

John La Rooy
John La Rooy

Reputation: 304117

>>> 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'

Upvotes: 94

Daniel
Daniel

Reputation: 3881

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

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

Upvotes: 335

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