Slack: Can <!date^...> send current date/time?

Question

In Slack, when using date formatting, such as <!date^1392734382^{date_num}|fallback text>, is it possible to send the current date/time instead of providing a specific Unix time?

Answer 1

No. This function is just for formatting. So you need to provide timestamp.

But most programming languages have a standard function that returns the current UTC time as UNIX epoch, which you can use.

For example in Python you would do:

from time import time

timestamp = int(time())