How to get the current time in Python

Question

What is the module/method used to get the current time?

Answer 1

Because no one has mentioned it yet, and this is something I ran into recently... a pytz timezone's fromutc() method combined with datetime's utcnow() is the best way I've found to get a useful current time (and date) in any timezone.

from datetime import datetime

import pytz


JST = pytz.timezone("Asia/Tokyo")


local_time = JST.fromutc(datetime.utcnow())

If all you want is the time, you can then get that with local_time.time().

Answer 2

datetime.now() returns the current time as a naive datetime object that represents time in the local timezone. That value may be ambiguous e.g., during DST transitions ("fall back"). To avoid ambiguity either UTC timezone should be used:

from datetime import datetime

utc_time = datetime.utcnow()
print(utc_time) # -> 2014-12-22 22:48:59.916417

Or a timezone-aware object that has the corresponding timezone info attached (Python 3.2+):

from datetime import datetime, timezone

now = datetime.now(timezone.utc).astimezone()
print(now) # -> 2014-12-23 01:49:25.837541+03:00

Answer 3

This question doesn't need a new answer just for the sake of it ... a shiny new-ish toy/module, however, is enough justification. That being the Pendulum library, which appears to do the sort of things which arrow attempted, except without the inherent flaws and bugs which beset arrow.

For instance, the answer to the original question:

>>> import pendulum
>>> print(pendulum.now())
2018-08-14T05:29:28.315802+10:00
>>> print(pendulum.utcnow())
2018-08-13T19:29:35.051023+00:00

There's a lot of standards which need addressing, including multiple RFCs and ISOs, to worry about. Ever get them mixed up; not to worry, take a little look into dir(pendulum.constants) There's a bit more than RFC and ISO formats there, though.

When we say local, though what do we mean? Well I mean:

>>> print(pendulum.now().timezone_name)
Australia/Melbourne
>>>

Presumably most of the rest of you mean somewhere else.

And on it goes. Long story short: Pendulum attempts to do for date and time what requests did for HTTP. It's worth consideration, particularly for both its ease of use and extensive documentation.

Answer 4

All good suggestions, but I find it easiest to use ctime() myself:

In [2]: from time import ctime
In [3]: ctime()
Out[3]: 'Thu Oct 31 11:40:53 2013'

This gives a nicely formatted string representation of current local time.

Answer 5

Quickest way is

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%Y%m%d")
'20130924'

Answer 6

You can use this function to get the time (unfortunately it doesn't say AM or PM):

def gettime():
        from datetime import datetime
        return ((str(datetime.now())).split(' ')[1]).split('.')[0]

To get the hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds to merge later, you can use these functions:

Hour:

def gethour():
        from datetime import datetime
        return return (((str(datetime.now())).split(' ')[1]).split('.')[0]).split(':')[0]

Minute:

def getminute():
        from datetime import datetime
        return (((str(datetime.now())).split(' ')[1]).split('.')[0]).split(':')[1]

Second:

def getsecond():
        from datetime import datetime
        return (((str(datetime.now())).split(' ')[1]).split('.')[0]).split(':')[2]

Millisecond:

def getmillisecond():
        from datetime import datetime
        return return (str(datetime.now())).split('.')[1]