Python - Parsing and converting string into timestamp [closed]

Question

I have string in next format: 2017-02-14T09:51:46.000-0600

What is the best approach to parse and convert string into timestamp? I have options to use regular expression or to write my own function for parsing, but are there any builtin methods which can help me?

Answer 1

First part would be creating datetime object:

from datetime import datetime

date_string = "2017-02-14T09:51:46.000-0600"
# I'm using date_string[:-9] to skip ".000-0600"
format_date = datetime.strptime(date_string, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z'))

After which format date is:

print(format_date)
2017-02-14 09:51:46

And timestamp is:

print(format_date.timestamp())
1487062306.0

Little clarification here, on python reference page, you can see definition for '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z') format specifiers I used.

• %Y: Year with century as a decimal number, e.g. 1970, 1988, 2001, 2013
• %m: Month as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g. 01, 02, ..., 12)
• %d: Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g. 01, 02, ..., 31)
• %H: Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g 00, 01, ..., 23)
• %M: Minute as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g 00, 01, ..., 59)
• %S: Second as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g. 00, 01, ..., 59)
• %f: Microsecond as a decimal number, zero-padded on the left (000000, 000001, ..., 999999)
• %z: UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM, empty string if the the object is naive, (empty or +0000, -0400, +1030)