Converting unix timestamp string to readable date

Question

I have a string representing a unix timestamp (i.e. "1284101485") in Python, and I'd like to convert it to a readable date. When I use time.strftime, I get a TypeError:

>>>import time
>>>print time.strftime("%B %d %Y", "1284101485")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: argument must be 9-item sequence, not str

Answer 1

Use datetime module:

from datetime import datetime
ts = int("1284101485")

# if you encounter a "year is out of range" error the timestamp
# may be in milliseconds, try `ts /= 1000` in that case
print(datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

Answer 2

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(1172969203.1)
datetime.datetime(2007, 3, 4, 0, 46, 43, 100000)

Taken from http://seehuhn.de/pages/pdate

Answer 3

The most voted answer suggests using fromtimestamp which is error prone since it uses the local timezone. To avoid issues a better approach is to use UTC:

datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(posix_time).strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')

Where posix_time is the Posix epoch time you want to convert

Answer 4

>>> import time
>>> time.ctime(int("1284101485"))
'Fri Sep 10 16:51:25 2010'
>>> time.strftime("%D %H:%M", time.localtime(int("1284101485")))
'09/10/10 16:51'

Answer 5

There are two parts:

1. Convert the unix timestamp ("seconds since epoch") to the local time
2. Display the local time in the desired format.

A portable way to get the local time that works even if the local time zone had a different utc offset in the past and python has no access to the tz database is to use a pytz timezone:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import tzlocal  # $ pip install tzlocal

unix_timestamp = float("1284101485")
local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone() # get pytz timezone
local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, local_timezone)

To display it, you could use any time format that is supported by your system e.g.:

print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))
print(local_time.strftime("%B %d %Y"))  # print date in your format

---

If you do not need a local time, to get a readable UTC time instead:

utc_time = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(utc_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f+00:00 (UTC)"))

---

If you don't care about the timezone issues that might affect what date is returned or if python has access to the tz database on your system:

local_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f"))

On Python 3, you could get a timezone-aware datetime using only stdlib (the UTC offset may be wrong if python has no access to the tz database on your system e.g., on Windows):

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from datetime import datetime, timezone

utc_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp, timezone.utc)
local_time = utc_time.astimezone()
print(local_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f%z (%Z)"))

Functions from the time module are thin wrappers around the corresponding C API and therefore they may be less portable than the corresponding datetime methods otherwise you could use them too:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import time

unix_timestamp  = int("1284101485")
utc_time = time.gmtime(unix_timestamp)
local_time = time.localtime(unix_timestamp)
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", local_time)) 
print(time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S+00:00 (UTC)", utc_time))  

Answer 6

In Python 3.6+:

import datetime

timestamp = 1579117901
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
print(f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}")

Output (in UTC)

2020-01-15 19:51:41

Explanation

• Line #1: Import datetime library.
• Line #2: Unix time which is seconds since 1970-01-01.
• Line #3: Converts this to a unix time object, check with: type(value)
• Line #4: Prints in the same format as strp.

Bonus

To save the date to a string then print it, use this:

my_date = f"{value:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}"
print(my_date)

Answer 7

For a human readable timestamp from a UNIX timestamp, I have used this in scripts before:

import os, datetime

datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(os.path.getmtime("FILE"))).strftime("%B %d, %Y")

Output:

'December 26, 2012'

Answer 8

Other than using time/datetime package, pandas can also be used to solve the same problem.Here is how we can use pandas to convert timestamp to readable date:

Timestamps can be in two formats:

1. 13 digits(milliseconds) - To convert milliseconds to date, use:

   import pandas
   result_ms=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261000',unit='ms')
   str(result_ms)
   
   Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01'
   

2. 10 digits(seconds) - To convert seconds to date, use:

   import pandas
   result_s=pandas.to_datetime('1493530261',unit='s')
   str(result_s)
   
   Output: '2017-04-30 05:31:01'
   

Answer 9

You can convert the current time like this

t=datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time())
t.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2012-03-07'

To convert a date in string to different formats.

import datetime,time

def createDateObject(str_date,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):    
    timeStamp = time.mktime(time.strptime(str_date,strFormat))
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timeStamp)

def FormatDate(objectDate,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):
    return objectDate.strftime(strFormat)

Usage
=====
o=createDateObject('2013-03-03')
print FormatDate(o,'%d-%m-%Y')

Output 03-03-2013

Answer 10

timestamp ="124542124"
value = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
exct_time = value.strftime('%d %B %Y %H:%M:%S')

Get the readable date from timestamp with time also, also you can change the format of the date.

Answer 11

Note that utcfromtimestamp can lead to unexpected results since it returns a naive datetime object. Python treats naive datetime as local time - while UNIX time refers to UTC.

This ambiguity can be avoided by setting the tz argument in fromtimestamp:

from datetime import datetime, timezone

dtobj = datetime.fromtimestamp(1284101485, timezone.utc)

>>> print(repr(dtobj))
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 10, 6, 51, 25, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

Now you can format to string, e.g. an ISO8601 compliant format:

>>> print(dtobj.isoformat(timespec='milliseconds').replace('+00:00', 'Z'))
2010-09-10T06:51:25.000Z

Answer 12

import datetime
temp = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1386181800).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print temp

Answer 13

Another way that this can be done using gmtime and format function;

from time import gmtime
print('{}-{}-{} {}:{}:{}'.format(*gmtime(1538654264.703337)))

Output: 2018-10-4 11:57:44

Answer 14

i just successfully used:

>>> type(tstamp)
pandas.tslib.Timestamp
>>> newDt = tstamp.date()
>>> type(newDt)
datetime.date

Answer 15

quick and dirty one liner:

'-'.join(str(x) for x in list(tuple(datetime.datetime.now().timetuple())[:6]))

'2013-5-5-1-9-43'

Answer 16

You can use easy_date to make it easy:

import date_converter
my_date_string = date_converter.timestamp_to_string(1284101485, "%B %d, %Y")

Answer 17

Use the following codes, I hope it will solve your problem.

import datetime as dt

print(dt.datetime.fromtimestamp(int("1284101485")).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))