Python datetime now with timezone

Working With TimeZones in Python

In this tutorial, we will learn how to work with timezone in Python.

After reading this article, you’ll learn:

• Handling of timezone by creating a timezone aware date and time.
• How to get the current time in a different timezone
• Get the current timezone name, UTC offset, and DST offset if DST is in effect
• How to convert UTC Datetime to a specific timezone
• Convert time from one timezone to another
• Mathematical operations on two timezone-aware and timezone naive objects
• Learn the tzinfo implementation modules namely pytz, ZoneInfo, and their methods.

Table of contents

What is timezone in Python?

A time zone represents the standardized time depending on which part of the world is being considered.

In simple terms, timezone refers to the local time of a region. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the astronomical time based on earth’s rotation, is the standard against which the world’s region-based time is coordinated.

Note: UTC – Coordinated Universal Time is the common time standard across the world. So, in Python, to work with the timezone without any issues, it is recommended to use the UTC as your base timezone

For example, CT(Central Time) in North and South America is either 5 or 6 hours behind and represented as UTC-5 or UTC-6 based on the Day Light Saving. Below are a few examples.

from datetime import datetime import pytz # current Datetime unaware = datetime.now() print('Timezone naive:', unaware) # Standard UTC timezone aware Datetime aware = datetime.now(pytz.utc) print('Timezone Aware:', aware) # US/Central timezone datetime aware_us_central = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Central')) print('US Central DateTime', aware_us_central)

Timezone naive: 2021-07-09 13:22:02.256978
Timezone Aware: 2021-07-09 07:52:02.256978+00:00
US Central DateTime 2021-07-09 02:52:02.313026-05:00

• To get the UTC time we used the pytz.utc as a parameter to datetime.now() function. The offset at the end is +00:00 which is the standrad UTC offset.
• To get the CDT datetime, we used the ‘US/Central’ region to create a timezone. The offset at the end is -05:00 is the UTC offset of the CDT region

Refer to list all timezones in Python if you don’t know the exact name of the timezone to create a date and time in the right timezone.

To make the old/existing datetime timezone aware, use the following code.

from datetime import datetime import pytz unaware = datetime(2021, 6, 15, 8, 45, 17, 5) print('Timezone naive:', unaware) # Convert unaware Datetime to UTC timezone aware Datetime aware = unaware.replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC) print(aware)

Note: The datetime.replace() method return the new datetime instance.

Format UTC DateTime to Get the timezone name

Extract the timezone name from UTC DateTime using the DateTime formatting in Python. Use the %Z directive to get the timezone name.

from datetime import datetime import pytz datetime_india = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Asia/Kolkata')) print("Formatted DateTime in IST : ", datetime_india.strftime('%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z')) # Output 2021:07:08 17:53:23 IST +0530

Note: IST is the timezone name

Create TimeZone Aware Datetime Object Using timezone class

Let’s see how create a timezone aware datetime object without pytz.

The datetime modules have the timezone class, which in turn is the subclass of the abstract base class tzinfo . Each instance created of the timezone class represents the offset of the timezone from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

We can create an UTC-aware datetime object by assigning the timezone.utc

datetime.timezone(offset, name=None)

Here offset represents the difference between the local time and the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). It can be a time delta object ranging from hours=-24 to +24.

from datetime import datetime, timezone, timedelta # naive naive = datetime.now() print("Naive DateTime:", naive) # UTC aware UTC = datetime.now(timezone.utc) print("UTC DateTime", UTC) # Creating a datetime with JST (Japan) TimeZone jst_dateTime = datetime.now(timezone(timedelta(hours=+9), 'JST')) print("In JST::", jst_dateTime) 

Note: we are setting the UTC offset using the timedelta class timedelta(hours=+9)

Get Current Time in Different Timezone

Using the pytz module we can get the current date and time of any timezone.

datetime.now(pytz.timezone('timezone name'))

• Use the pytz.timezone(‘region_name’) function to create the timezone object
• Use datetime.now(timezone_obj) function to get the current datetime of the given timezone.

Note: UTC – Coordinated Universal Time is the common time standard across the world. So, to work with the timezone without any issues, it is recommended to use the UTC as your base timezone.

In this example, we’ll see how to get the current datetime in the following timezones

USA: Get current Date and Time in the following TimeZones of United States

from datetime import datetime import pytz dt_us_central = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/Mexico_City')) print("US Central DateTime:", dt_us_central.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_us_pacific = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/Tijuana')) print("US Pacific timezone DateTime:", dt_us_pacific.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_us_eastern = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/New_York')) print("US Eastern timezone DateTime:", dt_us_eastern.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_us_mountain = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/Chihuahua')) print("US Mountain timezone DateTime:", dt_us_mountain.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z"))

US Central DateTime: 2021:07:08 08:37:34 CDT -0500 US Pacific timezone DateTime: 2021:07:08 06:37:34 PDT -0700 US Eastern timezone DateTime: 2021:07:08 09:37:34 EDT -0400 US Mountain timezone DateTime: 2021:07:08 07:37:34 MDT -0600

Other TimeZones

from datetime import datetime import pytz dt_japan = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Asia/Tokyo')) print("Japan DateTime:", dt_japan.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_brazil = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/Sao_Paulo')) print("Brazil DateTime:", dt_brazil.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_uk = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Europe/London')) print("Uk DateTime:", dt_uk.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_germany = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Europe/Berlin')) print("Germany DateTime:", dt_germany.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_aus = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Australia/Canberra')) print("Australia Oceanic DateTime:", dt_aus.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) dt_africa = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Africa/Maputo')) print("Central Africa: DateTime:", dt_africa.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) 

Japan DateTime: 2021:07:09 12:02:38 JST +0900 Brazil DateTime: 2021:07:09 00:02:38 -03 -0300 Uk DateTime: 2021:07:09 04:02:38 BST +0100 Germany DateTime: 2021:07:09 05:02:38 CEST +0200 Australia Oceanic DateTime: 2021:07:09 13:02:38 AEST +1000 Central Africa: DateTime: 2021:07:09 05:02:38 CAT +0200

Also, see: Convert between timezones

Get TimeZone Information Using tzinfo

The datetime.tzinfo is an abstract base class containing information about the date or time object passed to them.

The tzinfo generally contains the following information: –

• The time zone name of a Datetime
• Offset from the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)
• The DST(Daylight saving).

The tzinfo class provides the following method to get the timezone information: –

• tzinfo.tzname(dt) : Returns the time zone name corresponding to the datetime object dt . This method returns the name that is used while creating the timezone object
• tzinfo.utcoffset(dt) : This method returns the total offset from the UTC which should be a timedelta object. The values of the timedelta is positive if it is east of UTC and negative for the west of UTC. The total offset includes both timezone and the DST(Day light savings) values. The range of the timedelta is therfore between -timedelta(hours=24) to timedelta(hours=24)
• tzinfo.dst(dt) : This method returns dst offset in the zones where dst is in effect. In other cases it will return only timedelta(0) . The dst information is already part of the the utcoffset therefore the t z.utcoffset(dt) — tz.dst(dt) should return the standard offset of the timezone irrespective of the date and time but only on the geographic location.

from datetime import datetime import pytz # timezone: US Central Time dt_us_central = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('America/Mexico_City')) print("US Central DateTime:", dt_us_central.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) # Get current TimeZone name print(dt_us_central.tzname()) # Get UTC Offset print(dt_us_central.utcoffset()) # Get the daylight saving time (DST offset) adjustment print(dt_us_central.dst()) 

Our code produced the following information:

US Central DateTime: 2021:07:08 22:30:06 CDT -0500 TimeZone Name: CDT UTC Offset -1 day, 19:00:00 DST: 1:00:00

The datetime modules have the timezone class, which in turn is the subclass of the abstract base class tzinfo

Converting Between Timezones

Use the datetime.astimezone() method to convert the datetime from one timezone to another. This method uses an instance of the datetime object and returns a new datetime of a given timezone.

import datetime import pytz # UTC timezone Datetime dt_local = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.utc) print("UTC DateTime:", dt_local.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) # convert UTC timezone to 'US/Central' dt_us_central = dt_local.astimezone(pytz.timezone('US/Central')) print("US Central DateTime:", dt_us_central.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) # Convert 'US/Central' timezone to US/Eastern dt_us_eastern = dt_us_central.astimezone(pytz.timezone('America/New_York')) print("US Eastern DateTime:", dt_us_eastern.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) # Convert US/Eastern timezone to IST (India) timezone dt_ind = dt_us_eastern.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Asia/Kolkata')) print("India DateTime:", dt_ind.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z")) 

UTC DateTime: 2021:07:09 07:19:02 UTC +0000 US Central DateTime: 2021:07:09 02:19:02 CDT -0500 US Eastern DateTime: 2021:07:09 03:19:02 EDT -0400 India DateTime: 2021:07:09 12:49:02 IST +0530

Working with Local Timezones

Note: To work with the timezone without any issues, it is recommended to use the UTC as your base timezone not a local time.

As already mentioned, we can convert a naive datetime to an aware datetime instance with a timezone value set to a local standardized value.

We can do it with one of the pytz methods called localize () .This method is used to convert a naive to local time. It accepts the two arguments, namely the datetime object to localize and an optional is_dst flag.

This flag is set to true if we want to localize and the daylight saving information and false if we want only the standard offset time and false otherwise.

As mentioned above the tzinfo has a method called dst() which will return the Daylight Saving Time(DST) information if the flag is set to true.

Let us see an example to show how we can set a local time zone and get the DST information.

from datetime import datetime import pytz fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z' # Indian Standard Time tz_india = pytz.timezone('Asia/Kolkata') ist_local = tz_india.localize(datetime.now()) print("Indian Standard Time::", ist_local.strftime(fmt)) # Europe/Amsterdam Time amdam_tz = pytz.timezone('Europe/Amsterdam') dt = datetime(1983, 8, 3, 2, 0, 0) cest_local = amdam_tz.localize(dt, is_dst=True) print("Amsterdam with daylight saving time::", cest_local.strftime(fmt)) # Day Light Saving print("Daylight saving time in amsterdam on 3/8/83::", cest_local.tzinfo.dst(cest_local))

Indian Standard Time:: 2021-03-09 14:04:37 IST+0530 Amsterdam with daylight saving time:: 1983-08-03 02:00:00 CEST+0200 Daylight saving time in amsterdam on 3/8/83:: 1:00:00

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About Vishal

I’m Vishal Hule, Founder of PYnative.com. I am a Python developer, and I love to write articles to help students, developers, and learners. Follow me on Twitter

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