Is there a fairly easy way to convert a datetime object into an RFC 1123 (HTTP/1.1) date/time string, i.e. a string with the format
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
Using strftime
does not work, since the strings are locale-dependant. Do I have to build the string by hand?
You can use wsgiref.handlers.format_date_time from the stdlib which does not rely on locale settings
from wsgiref.handlers import format_date_time
from datetime import datetime
from time import mktime
now = datetime.now()
stamp = mktime(now.timetuple())
print format_date_time(stamp) #--> Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:52:40 GMT
You can use email.utils.formatdate from the stdlib which does not rely on locale settings
from email.utils import formatdate
from datetime import datetime
from time import mktime
now = datetime.now()
stamp = mktime(now.timetuple())
print formatdate(
timeval = stamp,
localtime = False,
usegmt = True
) #--> Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:55:46 GMT
If you can set the locale process wide then you can do:
import locale, datetime
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'en_US')
datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime('%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT')
If you don't want to set the locale process wide you could use Babel date formating
from datetime import datetime
from babel.dates import format_datetime
now = datetime.utcnow()
format = 'EEE, dd LLL yyyy hh:mm:ss'
print format_datetime(now, format, locale='en') + ' GMT'
A manual way to format it which is identical with wsgiref.handlers.format_date_time is:
def httpdate(dt):
"""Return a string representation of a date according to RFC 1123
(HTTP/1.1).
The supplied date must be in UTC.
"""
weekday = ["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun"][dt.weekday()]
month = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep",
"Oct", "Nov", "Dec"][dt.month - 1]
return "%s, %02d %s %04d %02d:%02d:%02d GMT" % (weekday, dt.day, month,
dt.year, dt.hour, dt.minute, dt.second)
You can use the formatdate() function from the Python standard email module:
from email.utils import formatdate
print formatdate(timeval=None, localtime=False, usegmt=True)
Gives the current time in the desired format:
Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:32:33 GMT
In fact, this function does it "by hand" without using strftime()
If anybody reading this is working on a Django project, Django provides a function django.utils.http.http_date(epoch_seconds)
.
from django.utils.http import http_date
some_datetime = some_object.last_update
response['Last-Modified'] = http_date(some_datetime.timestamp())
You can set LC_TIME to force stftime() to use a specific locale:
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'en_US')
'en_US'
>>> datetime.datetime.now().strftime(locale.nl_langinfo(locale.D_T_FMT))
'Wed 22 Oct 2008 06:05:39 AM '
Well, here is a manual function to format it:
def httpdate(dt):
"""Return a string representation of a date according to RFC 1123
(HTTP/1.1).
The supplied date must be in UTC.
"""
weekday = ["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun"][dt.weekday()]
month = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep",
"Oct", "Nov", "Dec"][dt.month - 1]
return "%s, %02d %s %04d %02d:%02d:%02d GMT" % (weekday, dt.day, month,
dt.year, dt.hour, dt.minute, dt.second)