Get UTC offset from time zone name in python

Question

How can I get UTC offset from time zone name in python?

For example: I have Asia/Jerusalem and I want to get +0200

Answer 1

Because of DST (Daylight Saving Time), the result depends on the time of the year:

import datetime, pytz  datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Asia/Jerusalem')).strftime('%z')  # returns '+0300' (because 'now' they have DST)   pytz.timezone('Asia/Jerusalem').localize(datetime.datetime(2011,1,1)).strftime('%z')  # returns '+0200' (because in January they didn't have DST) 

Answer 2

Have you tried using the pytz project and the utcoffset method?

e.g.

>>> import datetime >>> import pytz >>> pacific_now = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Pacific')) >>> pacific_now.utcoffset().total_seconds()/60/60 -7.0