Back

Explore Courses Blog Tutorials Interview Questions
0 votes
3 views
in Python by (45.3k points)

I have to create an "Expires" value 5 minutes in the future, but I have to supply it in UNIX Timestamp format. I have this so far, but it seems like a hack.

def expires():

    '''return a UNIX style timestamp representing 5 minutes from now'''

    epoch = datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1)

    seconds_in_a_day = 60 * 60 * 24

    five_minutes = datetime.timedelta(seconds=5*60)

    five_minutes_from_now = datetime.datetime.now() + five_minutes

    since_epoch = five_minutes_from_now - epoch

    return since_epoch.days * seconds_in_a_day + since_epoch.seconds

Is there a module or function that does the timestamp conversion for me?

1 Answer

0 votes
by (16.8k points)

You can use calendar.timegm:

future = datetime.datetime.utcnow() + datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)

return calendar.timegm(future.timetuple())

This is more portable as compared to %s flag to strftime (which does not even work on your windows)

Related questions

Welcome to Intellipaat Community. Get your technical queries answered by top developers!

30.5k questions

32.6k answers

500 comments

108k users

Browse Categories

...