CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondatetime
kiriloff
kiriloff

Reputation: 26333

Convert date to second from a reference - Python

time.time() gives current time in seconds from a given reference. Is there a mean to convert a date to a number of seconds since given reference?

I thought of calendar.timegm(), but I am not sure how to format the argument.

thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 169

Answers (2)

eumiro
eumiro

Reputation: 213015

calendar.timegm is the good approach. Just pass it the utctimetuple() output from your datetime object:

from datetime import datetime
import pytz
import calendar

dt = datetime.now(pytz.utc)
secs = calendar.timegm(dt.utctimetuple())
print dt, secs

prints 

2012-03-09 09:17:14.698500+00:00 1331284634

just to test it against the epoch:

print calendar.timegm(datetime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, tzinfo=pytz.utc).utctimetuple())

prints 0.

Upvotes: 1

jkerian
jkerian

Reputation: 17036

It sounds like you have current time X (seconds since the epoch), and you have a reference time Y. You want the number of seconds between them.

Use mktime to get seconds from the epoch to your reference point, and then just subtract X from Y, or Y from X (depending on which order you want).

Upvotes: 2

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