Convert date to timestamp in Python

Question

I have a database containing dates formatted like: "2015-10-20 22:24:46". I need to convert these dates to UNIX timestamps (UTC), what's the easiest way to do it with Python?

Answer 1

import time
timestamp = time.mktime(time.strptime('2015-10-20 22:24:46', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

For more on the format string with all the % symbols, see python's time library.