The strptime example for datetime with tz offset

Question

I have a datetime string 2020-10-23T11:50:19+00:00. I can parse it without a timezone as:

>>> datetime.strptime('2020-10-23T11:50:19', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S')

datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 23, 11, 50, 19)

But I'm having trouble parsing it with a 00:00 version of a timezone. What would be a correct way to do that?

>>> datetime.strptime('2020-10-23T11:50:19+00:00', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S+???')

 

Answer 1

You're looking for %z:

>>> datetime.strptime('2020-10-23T11:50:19+00:00', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z')

datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 23, 11, 50, 19, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

Beware of some Python version compatibility notes:

Changed in version 3.7: When the %z directive is provided to strptime() method, the UTC offsets can have a colon as a separator between hours, minutes, and seconds. For example, '+01:00:00' will be parsed as an offset of one hour. In addition, providing 'Z' is identical to '+00:00'.

More robust approach, it's not strptime, but it's still in stdlib since Python 3.7:

>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2020-10-23T11:50:19+00:00')

datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 23, 11, 50, 19, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

#As documented this function supports strings in the format:

YYYY-MM-DD[*HH[:MM[:SS[.fff[fff]]]][+HH:MM[:SS[.ffffff]]]]

where * can match any single character (not just a T).

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Answer 2

To give you a better idea of how to use strptime to parse a datetime string with an offset for the timezone in Python, use the datetime module. A simple example follows:

from datetime import datetime

# Datetime string with timezone offset
datetime_str = '2023-10-29 15:30:00 -0400'

# Format, with the timezone offset
format_str = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z'

# Parse a datetime string into a datetime object using strptime function
parsed_datetime = datetime.strptime(datetime_str, format_str)

Print out the parsed datetime and its details of tz_info
```
print("Parsed datetime:",parsed_datetime)
print("Timezone offset:",parsed_datetime.tzinfo)
Change to UTC
This only to make current date-time into UTC.

utc_datetime=parsed_datetime.astimezone(datetime.timezone.utc)
print("UTC datetime:", utc_datetime)
```
Import the module which one would need to run on that application: The provided data type which is supported here is like this; the data type object which has the datetime module.

Datetime Str = date_str holds sample string contains both date time and a tz information that it has which used the minus sign here indicates its is minus ( negative 4 hours or four hour's behind ).

Specify the Format String: the format string '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z' specifies the structure for the datetime string, indicating the timezone offset.

Use strptime to Parse a String: strptime converts this string into a datetime.

Print Results: The datetimes and their timezone knowledge are printed. Lastly, it shows how to convert from the datetime to UTC with astimezone.