Convert string date to timestamp in Python

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Chapters
00:00 Question
00:20 Accepted answer (Score 429)
00:32 Answer 2 (Score 77)
00:52 Answer 3 (Score 45)
01:03 Answer 4 (Score 44)
01:30 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9637...

Answer 1 links:
[here]: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ciso8601

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Tags
#python #datetime

#avk47

ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 445

>>> import time
>>> import datetime
>>> s = "01/12/2011"
>>> time.mktime(datetime.datetime.strptime(s, "%d/%m/%Y").timetuple())
1322697600.0

ANSWER 2

Score 83

I use ciso8601, which is 62x faster than datetime's strptime.

t = "01/12/2011"
ts = ciso8601.parse_datetime(t)
# to get time in seconds:
time.mktime(ts.timetuple())

You can learn more here.

ANSWER 3

Score 49

>>> int(datetime.datetime.strptime('01/12/2011', '%d/%m/%Y').strftime("%s"))
1322683200

ANSWER 4

Score 46

To convert the string into a date object:

from datetime import date, datetime

date_string = "01/12/2011"
date_object = date(*map(int, reversed(date_string.split("/"))))
assert date_object == datetime.strptime(date_string, "%d/%m/%Y").date()

The way to convert the date object into POSIX timestamp depends on timezone. From Converting datetime.date to UTC timestamp in Python:

date object represents midnight in UTC

import calendar

timestamp1 = calendar.timegm(utc_date.timetuple())
timestamp2 = (utc_date.toordinal() - date(1970, 1, 1).toordinal()) * 24*60*60
assert timestamp1 == timestamp2

date object represents midnight in local time

import time

timestamp3 = time.mktime(local_date.timetuple())
assert timestamp3 != timestamp1 or (time.gmtime() == time.localtime())

The timestamps are different unless midnight in UTC and in local time is the same time instance.