5 Best Ways to Convert Python Time to Timestamp

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💡 Problem Formulation: Converting time to a timestamp is a common task in Python programming, particularly when dealing with dates and times for logging, databases, or time-stamping events. A timestamp is a sequence of characters denoting the date and/or time at which a certain event occurred. For example, input might be in the form of a Python datetime object 2023-04-01 10:00:00, and the desired output could be a Unix timestamp like 1679856000.

Method 1: Using datetime.timestamp()

In Python’s datetime module, the timestamp() method converts a datetime object into a Unix timestamp. This method provides a straightforward way to obtain the number of seconds since the Unix epoch for a given datetime object.

Here’s an example:

from datetime import datetime

# Current date and time
now = datetime.now()

# Converting datetime to timestamp
timestamp = now.timestamp()
print(timestamp)

Output: 1679856000.547

This code snippet imports the datetime class from the datetime module and uses the now() method to get the current local date and time. Then it converts it to a Unix timestamp using the timestamp() method, which is printed out. The timestamp includes microseconds as a fraction.

Method 2: Using time.mktime() and datetime.timetuple()

The time.mktime() function from the time module converts a time tuple in local time to a Unix timestamp. The datetime.timetuple() method returns a time tuple suitable for this purpose.

Here’s an example:

from datetime import datetime
import time

# Current date and time
now = datetime.now()

# Converting datetime to time tuple and then to timestamp
timestamp = time.mktime(now.timetuple())
print(timestamp)

Output: 1679856000.0

This snippet converts a datetime object to a time tuple using the timetuple() method and then passes it to time.mktime() to generate the Unix timestamp. Unlike datetime.timestamp(), this method does not include information about microseconds in the timestamp.

Method 3: Using calendar module

The calendar module’s timegm() function is used to convert a time tuple in UTC to a Unix timestamp. This is useful when the datetime object is in UTC.

Here’s an example:

from datetime import datetime
import calendar

# Current UTC date and time
now_utc = datetime.utcnow()

# Converting UTC datetime to time tuple and then to timestamp
timestamp = calendar.timegm(now_utc.timetuple())
print(timestamp)

Output: 1679856000

In this code snippet, we capture the current time in UTC, convert it to a time tuple, and then convert the time tuple to a Unix timestamp using calendar.timegm(). This method avoids timezone conversions and returns the timestamp corresponding to UTC.

Method 4: Manual Conversion

For a more hands-on approach, one can manually calculate the timestamp by considering the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, which is January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 (UTC).

Here’s an example:

from datetime import datetime

# Current UTC date and time
now_utc = datetime.utcnow()
epoch = datetime(1970, 1, 1)

# Calculate the difference and convert to seconds
timestamp = (now_utc - epoch).total_seconds()
print(timestamp)

Output: 1679856000.0

This method calculates the difference in time between the current UTC datetime and the Unix epoch, then uses the total_seconds() method to convert this time difference to seconds, which represents the Unix timestamp.

Bonus One-Liner Method 5: Using time.time()

The time.time() function provides the easiest and most straightforward one-liner method to get the current time as a Unix timestamp.

Here’s an example:

import time

# Get current Unix timestamp
timestamp = time.time()
print(timestamp)

Output: 1679856000.547

This simple code uses the time.time() function to retrieve the current Unix timestamp, including fractions of a second.

Summary/Discussion

  • Method 1: datetime.timestamp(). Straightforward and precise including microseconds. Available in Python 3.3 and later.
  • Method 2: time.mktime() and datetime.timetuple(). Relies on local time; good for pre-3.3 Python compatibility.
  • Method 3: Calendar module’s timegm(). Best used when working with UTC times. Avoids the ambiguity of timezones.
  • Method 4: Manual calculation. Offers a deeper understanding of the conversion process and is timezone-agnostic.
  • Bonus Method 5: time.time(). Easiest one-liner for getting the current Unix timestamp.