Convert Python Timestamps to Datetime (and Back) – A Quick Guide

It's pretty common to store date and time as a timestamp in a database. A Unix timestamp is the number of seconds between a particular date and January 1, 1970 at UTC.

We can simply use the fromtimestamp() method from the datetime module to get a date from a UNIX timestamp.

Python timestamp to datetime

from datetime import datetime
# timestamp is number of seconds since 1970-01-01 
timestamp = 1545730073
# convert the timestamp to a datetime object in the local timezone
dt_object = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
# print the datetime object and its type
print("dt_object =", dt_object)
print("type(dt_object) =", type(dt_object))

Output

dt_object = 2018-12-25 09:27:53
type(dt_object) = <class 'datetime.datetime'>

Here, we have imported the datetime class from the datetime module.

Then, we used the datetime.fromtimestamp() class method which returns the local date and time (datetime object). This object is stored in the dt_object variable.

Note: We can easily create a string representing date and time from a datetime object using strftime() method.

Python datetime to timestamp

In Python, we can get timestamp from a datetime object using the datetime.timestamp() method. For example,

from datetime import datetime
# current date and time
now = datetime.now()
# convert from datetime to timestamp
ts = datetime.timestamp(now)
print("Timestamp =", ts)

Output

Timestamp = 1672138646.118119

Here, the datetime.timestamp() method takes a datetime object as an argument and returns a Unix timestamp.

Also Read:

• Python Program to Convert String to Datetime

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