How to convert date string with timezone to datetime in python

Question

I need to compare two date string and for that, I need to convert the date string to datetime object. An example of a date string is "2015-08-23T03:36:30-05:00". I am assuming "-05:00" is the timezone string. I could to convert the string to datetime using below approach:

import datetime

str = '2015-08-23T03:36:30-05:00'

datetime.datetime.strptime(str,"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S-%f:00")

I can see the value of microsecond as 50000 which seems wrong to me as the -5:00 value is the timezone. What is the correct way to parse as I will be comparing two datetimes?

%f is the parser directive for parsing the microseconds part of the timestamp. The UTC offset directive is %z, but it uses a format without colon. So, if you can adjust the source format, you can go with the standard directives. Otherwise, you might have to come up with a custom regular expression. — lzydrmr
– lzydrmr, Commented Apr 3, 2022 at 20:14

user7864386 · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-03 20:35:33Z

3

You could use %z to parse timezone info:

>>> from datetime import datetime, timezone
>>> datetime.strptime(str, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z")
datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 23, 3, 36, 30, tzinfo=datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(days=-1, seconds=68400)))

Then, if you want to convert this datetime to UTC (which I assume is your goal since you say you want to compare datetimes), you could use astimezone method:

>>> datetime.strptime(str, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z").astimezone(timezone.utc)
datetime.datetime(2015, 8, 23, 8, 36, 30, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

Back in string format:

>>> datetime.strptime(str, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z").astimezone(timezone.utc).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
'2015-08-23 08:36:30'

answered Apr 3, 2022 at 20:35

user7864386

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Didier Huyberechts · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-13 07:04:26Z

0

If your problem is that the initial time is in the wrong time zone, you can reverse to UTC time this way:

dt = '20230206 04:00:00 Asia/Muscat'
dateTime = dt[0:17]`
timeZone = dt[18:]
dateTimeDt = datetime.strptime(dateTime, "%Y%m%d %H:%M:%S")
timeDiff = datetime.now(pytz.timezone(timeZone)).strftime('%z')
dateTimeUTC = dateTimeDt - timedelta(hours=int(timeDiff)/100)

print('Initial local time : ',dateTime)
print('UTC time: ',dateTimeUTC)

answered Apr 13, 2023 at 7:04

Didier Huyberechts

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