Convert UTC datetime string to local datetime

Question

If you don't want to provide your own tzinfo objects, check out the python-dateutil library. It provides tzinfo implementations on top of a zoneinfo (Olson) database such that you can refer to time zone rules by a somewhat canonical name.

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz

# METHOD 1: Hardcode zones:
from_zone = tz.gettz('UTC')
to_zone = tz.gettz('America/New_York')

# METHOD 2: Auto-detect zones:
from_zone = tz.tzutc()
to_zone = tz.tzlocal()

# utc = datetime.utcnow()
utc = datetime.strptime('2011-01-21 02:37:21', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

# Tell the datetime object that it's in UTC time zone since 
# datetime objects are 'naive' by default
utc = utc.replace(tzinfo=from_zone)

# Convert time zone
central = utc.astimezone(to_zone)

Edit Expanded example to show strptime usage

Edit 2 Fixed API usage to show better entry point method

Edit 3 Included auto-detect methods for timezones (Yarin)

Here's a resilient method that doesn't depend on any external libraries:

from datetime import datetime
import time

def datetime_from_utc_to_local(utc_datetime):
    now_timestamp = time.time()
    offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(now_timestamp) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(now_timestamp)
    return utc_datetime + offset

This avoids the timing issues in DelboyJay's example. And the lesser timing issues in Erik van Oosten's amendment.

As an interesting footnote, the timezone offset computed above can differ from the following seemingly equivalent expression, probably due to daylight savings rule changes:

offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(0) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0) # NO!

Update: This snippet has the weakness of using the UTC offset of the present time, which may differ from the UTC offset of the input datetime. See comments on this answer for another solution.

To get around the different times, grab the epoch time from the time passed in. Here's what I do:

def utc2local(utc):
    epoch = time.mktime(utc.timetuple())
    offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(epoch) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(epoch)
    return utc + offset

See the datetime documentation on tzinfo objects. You have to implement the timezones you want to support yourself. The are examples at the bottom of the documentation.

Here's a simple example:

from datetime import datetime,tzinfo,timedelta

class Zone(tzinfo):
    def __init__(self,offset,isdst,name):
        self.offset = offset
        self.isdst = isdst
        self.name = name
    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return timedelta(hours=self.offset) + self.dst(dt)
    def dst(self, dt):
            return timedelta(hours=1) if self.isdst else timedelta(0)
    def tzname(self,dt):
         return self.name

GMT = Zone(0,False,'GMT')
EST = Zone(-5,False,'EST')

print datetime.utcnow().strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %Z')
print datetime.now(GMT).strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %Z')
print datetime.now(EST).strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %Z')

t = datetime.strptime('2011-01-21 02:37:21','%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
t = t.replace(tzinfo=GMT)
print t
print t.astimezone(EST)

Output

01/22/2011 21:52:09 
01/22/2011 21:52:09 GMT
01/22/2011 16:52:09 EST
2011-01-21 02:37:21+00:00
2011-01-20 21:37:21-05:00a

If you want to get the correct result even for the time that corresponds to an ambiguous local time (e.g., during a DST transition) and/or the local utc offset is different at different times in your local time zone then use pytz timezones:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import pytz    # $ pip install pytz
import tzlocal # $ pip install tzlocal

local_timezone = tzlocal.get_localzone() # get pytz tzinfo
utc_time = datetime.strptime("2011-01-21 02:37:21", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
local_time = utc_time.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc).astimezone(local_timezone)